


Magnara

by Samarkand12



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, SCIENCE!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-13 07:04:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 39,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12978663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samarkand12/pseuds/Samarkand12
Summary: Far north beyond the Wall, a Sparky accident sends a young woman into a land of snow and ice.  Agatha Heterodyne lands in place with no technology more complicated than bronzeworking, a population who can't read, and the threat of the Others looming in the dark night beyond the firelight.She is also the Heterodyne.  And soon there will be those who call herMagnara.





	1. Enter, pursued by a bear

Ignoring the wind whistling through his ripped breeches, Tormund Giantsbane worked out how to tell the tale of this night without coming off as a complete arse. Getting drunk and needful on enough mead to wander into a hibernating bear's den thinking it was Magga's cabin was bad enough. Finding out too late that you were buggering a very male bear might give the men who followed him the wrong ideas. Not that Tormund gave a toss about whether a man liked swallowing a sword. But beyond-the-Wall, you shared furs with whomever was needful when winter's kiss came. Having a reputation for arse-plundering caused some awkwardnesses--either way--that Tormund cared not to deal with.  
  
Har! Why, there was that she-bear pelt in Ruddy Hall by his bed. It was the one he had bagged a moon's turn ago. That'd be the woman's pelt she had left behind after he had stolen her growling and screaming from her bed. Just for a touch of fun, he could say that a hairless bear with queer cubs had been seen wandering away. That'd be a fine tale to spread. A new name title to add to the many he had claimed in forty years: Husband to Bears. Tormund slugged down another gulp of strongmead from the skin still slung over one shoulder. Chipped out of a cask of mead left to freeze, it tasted of honey and fire and summer as the warmth spread through his veins. Tormund whistled cheerfully as he headed towards the village where he kept hearth and hall.  
  
The lightning that struck no more than fifty paces away knocked him arse-over-heels into a snowdrift. Tormund blinked stars out of his eyes. His head was reeling from more than mead when he dug his way out of the drift. White walkers take him, what had happened? Jaw open wide enough for a weasel to run down it, the wilding chieftain stared at the ring of devastation where there had once been a clearing in the haunted forest. Some heat that had not baked him to a husk had melted away all the snow and even the needles of the pines of the forest floor. There was only fused rock like dragonglass. Stories of what had happened to Hardhome send chills cold as the Wall through him. Sorcery. It had to be.  
  
Then he saw the throne.  
  
It had to be a throne like the ones kneeler kings sat their fat arses upon south of the Wall. All gold and crystal it was. Tormund grinned. Har! Now this would be a fine thing to bring back to Ruddy Hall! He'd almost be a kneeler lord lounging in it. Wait. He blinked more sparkles from his vision. There was someone in there. His hand went quickly to the castle-forged steel blade he had taken from a crow he had killed last time he had gone a-raiding. Sorcery. It had to be. Cautiously, Tormund stalked across the still-warm stone to the girl sitting upon the throne.  
  
It was a woman-grown who had been trapped in the damned thing. Golden shackles pinned her wrists to the arm-rests. A sacrifice? She was a fine figure of a maid in a silken gown green as the foam upon the sea that hugged her womanly figure. Nice and curvy, with a good bit of muscle that spoke of no soft southron girl. It was more of a spearwife's body. He gently stroked golden hair that was lightly kissed by fire--a lucky colour, that--away from her features. Oh, this night was becoming better than better. It had been ages since he had had stolen a wife as fine as this.  
  
Her eyelids fluttered open.  
  
Eyes green as emeralds stared at him.  
  
She whispered something in a tongue that was neither Common nor Old.  
  
"What was that?" Tormund asked.  
  
"E-nglish? You are from Q-queen A-albia?" The lovely maid struggled against her bonds. "H-have to--find Baron--Wulf---warn--"  
  
"Now now, you're coming with Tormund," he said, prying at the shackles with the pommel of his sword.  
  
"NO!" The girl's scream could how drowned out a wail over a Frostfangs peak. "RUN! GET TO THE BARON! TELL HIM! WARN HIM! _THE OTHER NEVER DIED! **THE OTHER IS NOT DEAD!**_ "  
  
++++  
  
"We serve our goddess."  
  
Terrible energies.  
  
The touch of a foul mind upon hers.  
  
Agony.  
  
Oh god, she couldn't stop it, this was worse than anything she could imagine. Trapped. Violated worse than she had ever feared von Zinzer's brother might do to her in that stinking alley. Her mother was the Other. She was but a host for the worst monster that had ever befallen Europa. Stop it stop it she had been so close so near get to the Castle only she couldn't move she couldn't speak she tried the special hum but nothing worked she was being raped her own mother violation wrong want to die have to warn have to stop have to warn the Baron red fire Zeetha Tarvek Gil stop it mommy why are you doing this to me why being raped don't let these be my last thoughts NOOOOOOOOOOO---  
  
"--noooooo--" Agatha Heterodyne whispered.  
  
"Shhhh. Sleep, my child," an elderly voice said. "You're safe here from them as walk the snows. Tormund has the men out kindling watchfires all around the village."  
  
"W-warn the Baron," Agatha croaked. "I-I confess, I am Agatha Heterodyne. Bring me into Wulfenbach hands. The Other--"  
  
"Wulfenbach? Is he the kneeler you serve, child? I've heard of no southron house of that name that serves the Stark."  
  
What?  
  
Agatha Heterodyne opened her eyes. That effort cost her more will than it had ever taken her to avoid Zeetha's motivational swats after three hours of training. Sweet lightning, her brain ached as bad as if the Baron had taken a coring engine to it. Her thoughts skittered away from the reason why as if they were a whole horde of squishy, disgusting spiders. Agatha fought back the sobs that threatened to claim her. Her own mother had done this to her. No. Agatha couldn't afford weakness. Not now. The Baron had to be told. Even if it meant her death or whatever grim fate awaited Sparks that the Baron closely studied.  
  
She stared up at rough-hewn timbers black with smoke.  
  
Her hands stroked the furs covering her naked body.  
  
Of course she was naked in a compromised position. Nothing new there.  
  
"Wh-where am I?" Agatha managed. Not in England. Nothing this primitive in Albia's realm. But why was the speaker talking in that tongue?  
  
"You're in Ruddy Hall." A white-haired face crinkled with wrinkles left by decades of harsh life came into view.  
  
"Where in Europa? Italy? The Baron's lands? Spain?"  
  
"I've never heard o' those lands," the crone said. "Be that in the Seven Kingdoms, or across the sea?"  
  
Agatha blinked.  
  
Something was very, very wrong.  
  
But she was so tired. So horribly, horribly hurt.  
  
_My own mother raped me._  
  
Even Zeetha would let her cry.  
  
Curling up beneath the furs, Agatha Heterodyne cried bitter tears as exhaustion took her.

 

 

 


	2. Rude Awakening

"This is good steel beneath the gilt." Toregg rapped the throne with a knuckle. "Never heard of no Other working iron. They were said to fear it, they were."  
  
"You want a blade that might come from them that walks the cold night?" Tormund stuffed another rag soaked in pitch into the throne's innards. "Son, even if it weren't white walkers that made it, I wouldn't use a sliver of the metal. It's tainted with some sorcery."  
  
"Fair then. What of the maid?" Toregg smirked. "Have you claimed her for wife? If no, then I might snatch her from her bed."  
  
"She's eaten gruel in Ruddy Hall." Tormund smacked his eldest upside the head. "You're taller than me, lad. But thicker between the ears. She has guest rights until she leaves."  
  
"Fair enough. Once she goes, I mean to steal her, old man," Toregg replied.  
  
"She'd bear good children with those hips," Tormund agreed. "Wouldn't mind a suck o' her teats when she's with milk. Har! Now, spark that arrow alight."  
  
Tormund retreated to the edge of the clearing to get out of the wind. They needed some calm air to set flint and steel to the pitch-soaked wool tied about the base of the arrow. Truth be told, he felt safer the farther from the damned thing he was. He couldn't admit before his son that it made him craven to be near it too long. He had foolishly peering into the innards of the throne when placing kindling and rags. The mass of wires and crystals and other devilish bits within it had twisted around in his vision. It had twisted his mind near to raving, too. Even now he couldn't shake off the _wrongness_ of what he had spied. Eveyone would be safer the quicker it was dealt with.  
  
Tormund drew back the bowstring after the rag finally caught. The flame nearly snuffed when the wind caught it in its arc to the throne. It stayed alight just long enough to set flames licking among the pile of timber soaked with pitch piled about the throne. Every free folk village made sure to have such on hand for pyres. He had judged flame best to harm the thing. Certainly nothing in the village could break it up. He had smacked it several times with a great bronze maul without doing much. Fire purified. That much was known among those beyond-the-Wall. Fire was denied the white walkers their due. Let it burn. He watched the blaze climb high into the sky as something within the throne caught.  
  
There was a sudden, horrible shriek.  
  
Tormund and Toregg scrambled back when the pyre climbed into the sky in flames that shimmered in a hundreds of strange hues like ghost-lights come to earth.  
  
Later, they silently stared at the seemingly-bottomless pit melted into the earth.  
  
++++  
  
Agatha buried herself deeper in the furs. Outside the walls of this place she could hear a gale picking up. Extending one precautionary toe out from under her shelter had discovered the air was shockingly cold even inside. Better to pretend she was back in her snug room above the smithy in Beetleburg. On winter days without school, she had dragged out waking up until Lilith had broken out the heavy machinery. Those had been the most peaceful times of her childhood. She had dozed listening to Adam working below. Her mind had been free to spin out designs and inventions without the locket smothering her creativity beneath pain and stupidity. Better to just lie here. Because if she had to think, then she had to remember it all: the horror of Adam and Lilith's death, losing Gil, and the shattering agony of her-- No. She would never call that _thing_ "mother". Ever.  
  
Beep.  
  
Zeetha?  
  
Up, up, my zumil.  
  
Oh, you're just a voice in my head. That's to be expected.  
  
Stop it. Up! I didn't train you to wallow in despair.  
  
This is not wallowing. This is resting.  
  
It's wallowing. Oink, oink, oink.  
  
_Don't start with the pig references._  
  
Good. Anger. Use that. You were violated. You were used. Hurt. Humiliated. Do you think the pirates who took me left me completely untouched? You can't let this defeat you. I taught you better than that. Endure the pain. Survive the shame. Gather your strength. Survive. Or else I shall bring out the stick.  
  
_Bah. You're a figment of my imagination. I am free of the tyranny of that vile instrument of correction!_  
  
Oh, reeeeeaaaaallly?  
  
The furs were jerked aside.  
  
A calloused hand slammed into her backside with a sharp report.  
  
"Up you get, time for you to answer some--"  
  
**_"You impudent miserable swine, you dare lay a hand upon me?"_**  
  
That's my zumil. Go get him!  
  
_" **RAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"**_  
  
++++  
  
Kylla Snow knelt before the village heart tree praying for her lost babe. Her loins still ached from the hard birthing three moon's turns ago. Only a week past had they given the poor mite's body to the pyre while she wept. At least the wildings worshipped the Old Gods. Had it been an ironborn reaver who had taken her for a salt wife, she would have had to pray to their devil-god of the sea for the soul of her nameless child. Here she could pray silently before the face carved into the pale wood. The cold winds of a winter froze the tears that she tried to shed. The red sap of the weirwood still wept for them both. Kylla silently keened her mourning. She mourned her babe. She mourned her maidenhead stolen when Pyg had taken her from the mill. She mourned Pate lying so cold on the stones, with axe still in his stiffening hands, as the mill burned down around him.  
  
Kylla did not mourn Pyg. He had died hard in a fight with another wilding tribe. He had died choking with a fire-hardened spear in his throat, they said. So she was free of that, until the time another wilding tried his luck to snatch her from the hovel she had inheirited from her kidnapper. Or one of the village men decided she wasn't truly one of them and decided she was fair game. Or the Others came to take her away into the cold, cold night. Everyone had heard the Giantsbane's prize screaming about them. The Norrey's maester had said the Others were thousands of years gone. If they had ever existed at all. But here beyond-the-Wall, Kylla knew that the walkers in the night were never far away. This was the wild lands. Beyond the palisade were grumkins and snarks and giants and other things. The watchfires kindled by the villagers told the truth.  
  
Poor woman. Kylla thought of the glimpse she had seen of the girl brought in over the Giantsbane's shoulders as she had been. Her fine gown and well-fed beauty told the tale. She was a high-born girl who would suffer even more than some bastard girl's who'd known hard work. She would suffer terribly when the Giantsbane or one of his sons took her as a--  
  
The stout doors of Ruddy Hall shattered as Tormund Giantsbane--the toughest man for leagues around--tumbled head over arse through the air. He ploughed a trench ten yards long through the snow when he landed. His son Toregg the Tall was flung out a few moments later. Blood and bruises were all over their faces. Toregg's right arm jutted at an unnatural angle. From Ruddy Hall came a roar more terrible than a dragon's. Out stalked the Giantsbane's capture. She was as naked as she might have been on her nameday. She was none the less terrifying for that. Kneeler girl, the wildings called Kylla. Well, she stayed kneeling as the woman charged across the snow as if she didn't even feel the cold. In her hands was a broken timber that might have given even the Giantsbane pause to wield. The woman snarled in a foreign tongue like a giant with a hot poker shoved up its arse.  
  
Eyes alight with madness and rage alighted upon her.  
  
**_"You."_**  
  
"Yes, milady?" Kylla cowered. Oh gods, she was going to die for true.  
  
**_"Clothes."_**  
  
"Milady?"  
  
**_"Clothes. Now. Scour whatever benighted pest-hole I have landed up in. I don't care if they're rags. I. Want. Clothes. And all the tools you can find."_**  
  
"T-tools--I--"  
  
**_"NOW!"_**  
  
"YES, MISTRESS!"

 

 

 


	3. Not In Kansas

Sweet lightning, where was she?  
  
Agatha inspected the clothing brought to her by the girl with increasing dismay. Travels with Master Payne's Circus through the wilder parts of the Europan wastelands had brought her through some poor villages; the peasants in the remote villages of the Banat and Carpathians had to make do with roughspun cloth rather than the machine-woven fabrics one could find in the towns. Yet the simple dresses of the countryfolk were the finest fashions of Paris compared to these! The woolen tunic seemed to have been woven by a crazed, blind macramaist. The goatskin trousers were sewn with what appeared to be animal sinew. The jacket was a crude sheepskin with the wool left on and the hide itself indifferently tanned. The fur-lined footwear were more akin to the moccasins worn by those in the troupe who masqueraded as Americans.  
  
The paltry tools that the girl had gathered were little better. Antler scrapers, knives chipped from flint or bone, one or two pieces of bronze--this was right out of an anthropology exhibit of primitive tribes in TPU's "Progress of Man" exhibit in the university museum. The Sami who suffered under the rule of the Polar Ice Lords had better than this. Her unease grew when she finally had a decent look about her surroundings. Damn Vrin for taking her glasses, everything was slightly blurry without them. Agatha's slight myopia did not stop her from seeing the log walls chinked with moss or the open hearth in the center of the great hall. Her nose was more than sensitive to make out the tang of the goats and sheep milling about in the pen.   
  
Could she be in the far northern regions of the Americas, among a colony of English who had devolved to the Bronze Age? Or could it be a case of somewhen? Agatha gritted her teeth when the memories triggered at that thought. They were fragments of thought not her own. An atonal hum escaped her lips as she struggled to push the touch of her mother's mind from her consciousness. Hee, so clever, wasn't I, projecting my consciousness into temporal space? My priestesses would bring my calling into the Heterodyne Girl bred to fulfill the prophecy. All of Europa would have bowed before me with my lovely wasps controlling their weak little minds--  
  
Agatha hummed harder as she slathered the crude soap brought by the girl over her body. It was worse than the stuff Lilith had had to boil up out of lye and lard on the kitchen stove. It stung her skin as she washed and washed. Anything to strip the utter filth off of her. The kettle of tepid water from the hearth wasn't enough to rinse her clean. Agatha reached through the bearskin draped over the shattered doors to grab fistfuls of snow. She scoured herself over and over until her hands were nearly frostbitten. It was not enough. It would never be enough.  
  
Shaking, she donned every stich of clothing provided. At least it cut out the merciless chill that pervaded the air. Wherever she was--whenever she was--the climate was decidedly chillier than even a Europa in the grip of the Little Ice Age. Everyone in Europa had cursed Helmut of Siena's mad vulcanology experiments on the former isle of Iceland. Zeetha's training had her testing the weapons that the girl had brought along with the other items. A bone knife with a grip wrapped in leather was sheathed at one hip. A bronze leaf-shaped sword and a seven-foot spear with a bronze head right out of Ancient Greece needed a little sharpening. The round shield of hide stretched over wicker seemed intact. Agatha sat down with a whetstone to attend to her new blade.  
  
She ignored the groaning from her host. He hung by his heels from a rope slung over a beam. He was a short but powerfully-muscled man with golden armbands incised with runes. They appeared either Celtic or Nordic, though that bit of anthroplogy wasn't among her studies. His hair was a russet going to grey. What could have been his son--a taller man closer to her age--lay unconscious with his broken arm splinted with an antler and strips of cloth. A furtive shifting called her attention to the girl cowering by the hearth. Perhaps two years younger than Agatha, she was a short and plump dark-haired girl who had obviously gone through a recent pregnancy. A touch of guilt she didn't feel for the ass-slapping swine went through her.  
  
"Are you alright?" Agatha asked. "Thanks for the clothes and the tools. I'd feel naked without them. Especially without the tools."  
  
"As it pleases mist--my pardons, milady," the girl squeaked out.  
  
"'Mistress' is acceptable," Agatha said. "Just never, ever call me 'darling'."  
  
"Yes, mistress," the girl squeaked out. "M'name's Kylla, mistress. Are you from the Reach? Or Dorne? I've never heard an accent like yours."  
  
"I think I am very, very far from the lands I call home," Agatha said.  
  
"Mistress must be from across the narrow sea," Kylla said.   
  
"Kylla, where exactly am I?"  
  
"You're beyond-the-Wall, mistress," Kylla said. The peasant girl cocked her head at Agatha's puzzlement. "Surely you've heard of the Wall, mistress. Everyone knows of it. It's what guards the realms of men from the wildings 'n....Others."  
  
"The Others." Agatha noted the telltale whisper of a dreaded foe. "I've heard of the Other. But we might not be talking about the same person."  
  
"Mistress must have come from far off lands to not know of them." Kylla huddled deeper under her woolen cloak. "The Others were demons of ice and snow who brought the Long Night thousands of years ago. They came upon ice spiders and riding ice dragons, the blue-eyed dead shambling before them, until the last hero stopped them at the Dawn."  
  
Red fire, could she be in the future? Could she be in a time when her mother had triumphed?  
  
"Maester Callorn said the Others were long gone, if they ever were at all," Kylla said. "And there's the Wall and the Night's Watch to keep them from the realms of men. I saw it when Pyg 'n the raiders brought me over it. Seven hundred feet high t'was. Took him a day to drag me up and over. They say it stretches a hundred leagues from th' Shivering Sea to the Gorge."  
  
Agatha silently processed the prospect of an artificial glacier over--what was that in metric?--nearly five hundred kilometers long and two hundred meters high.  
  
_And she was on the wrong side of it._  
  
"Kylla, can you draw me a map of this nation of yours?" Agatha was proud how steady her voice was.  
  
"Of course, mistress!" Kylla seized a bit of kindling. She drew in the dirt floor. "I saw a tapestry of the Seven Kingdoms in Maester Callorn's rooms when--ah--"  
  
"It's alright. I've probably heard spicier," Agatha said.  
  
"Said using m' mouth wasn't breaking his vows." Kylla shrugged. "'m bastard-born, anyway. Us bastards, we're born of lies and lust."  
  
"Kylla, you have been very helpful to me in a bad time." Agatha smiled. "I don't care how you were born. Only that you've been very kind. Please let me call you a friend."  
  
"I--I never had a lady let me call her that." Tears gathered at the corners of Kylla's eyes. "Milad--mistress is ever so kind. Would she let me serve her?"  
  
"Well, minions are always useful--" Agatha pointed at the stick. "The map, please."  
  
Kylla stammered out her thanks as she drew the world as she knew it in the earth.  
  
It was not even close to the world as Agatha understood it.  
  
This was not the Americas. Not unless she had been shifted so far back or forward in time that the very shape of the continents had changed over eons. Agatha stared at the simple map of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros were sketched out. Her eidetic memory for facts tickled up the outline of Ireland beyond Albia's realm. Westeros appeared to be Ireland flipped upside down and enlarged. If Kylla's map was even vaguely to scale, the five hundred kilometers of the Wall put the size of these lands as a continent far larger than Europa. Kylla was not so sure of what lay across this narrow sea, although the place names sounded vaguely Meditterranean. The waters between these lands and the east was much, much too small to be the Atlantic. Mentions of the mythic lost civilization of Valyria and even more distant lands like Yi Ti were entirely foreign to anything Agatha had heard of in the World she came from.  
  
The despair that filled Agatha's soul was what Zeetha must have experienced.  
  
Zeetha.  
  
The troupe.  
  
Lars.  
  
Gil.  
  
All gone.  
  
++++  
  
Wasn't the first time Tormund had ended up swinging from his heels after a woman had beat him bloody. Leastways the girl touched with fire hadn't thrown a bucket of sour piss in his face. Tormund grinned through bloody and bruised lips at the memory of the fight. Gods be good, it wasn't even spring and the sap was rising in his member. She fought like a shadowcat and hit like an aurochs. Har! What she'd be like under the furs he couldn't imagine. Though mayhaps she was more fond o' Toregg. She had broken the boy's arm. That was a sign of affection right enough.   
  
He cracked open the one eye was wasn't swollen shut. The girl was sitting by the coals of a dying fire drinking mead from his best alehorn. Tormund had seen slopes of the Frostfangs that were less bleak than her face. He flinched a bit when her gaze passed his way. Not that he was scared. Not him, the Giantsbane, the Speaker to Gods, the Mead-King of Ruddy Hall. Life beyond-the-Wall had taught him hard lessons, mind. One of them had been when he had crawled into a cave for shelter from a storm. He had come face to face with a direwolf nursing her pups. The girl's stare fixed him still as he had then on hands and knees, not hardly breathing in case the claws and fangs came out.  
  
"Is the Beacon Engine gone?" the girl asked. "The object I was strapped into."  
  
"Set it alight m'self," Tormund replied. "Melted a hole deeper than the Gorge."  
  
"Well, so much for getting home soon," the girl said. "Smart of you to destroy it. She can't come through it."  
  
"That the sorceress who took you?" Tormund asked. "Or was it one of the white walkers after all?"  
  
"You could call dear mother a sorceress," the girl said. "That witch meant to shove her mind into mine. Take me over like the good little host I was meant to be, like a wasp fusing with someone's brainstem."  
  
"Others eat my eyes, even wargs don't dare try that." Tormund shuddered. A skinchanger taking a human's skin was a nightmare true.   
  
"Well, the engine's gone." The girl's smile was a terrible thing. "Everyone's safe. Schnapps all around."  
  
"Oh, lass, cut me down," Tormund pleaded. "You beat me fair. I am Tormund Giantsbane. Me cock's thrice the size of any man on either side of the Wall. Lost count of the men I've beaten. Dance with me under the furs as my spearwife, and I'll put fine strong sons and fair daughters in your belly."  
  
The girl drained the last of the skin of mead. Straight.  
  
"What's depressing is that's more romantic than the last wedding proposal I had."  
  
"So you'll cut me down and--" Tormund waggled his hips suggestively.  
  
"Pass."  
  
"Har! You're a cruel cold woman! Just like I like 'em." Tormund shrugged. "Best warn ye, after that, every man in the village will be after ye to test himself. They'll be lining up to steal you as a bride."  
  
"Gotterdamerung. This must be how Von Pinn felt every single day."  
  
A bone knife flipped through the air. Tormund tumbled to the ground when it severed the rope.  
  
"I'm going to rest." The girl seized some furs, heading for a far corner. "As you can guess, I am not a morning person. If you so much as lay a finger on me, I will sew that hand to the inside of your liver."  
  
Tormund sighed.  
  
The girl would be his. She had already admitted her love!


	4. Befriendship Through Percussive Social Interaction

Nothing cured a hangover better than a training montage. Zeetha would have had her wear that ridiculously-brief Skiffandrian novice's costume for the morning's practice despite the hideous cold that permeated the air. Agatha thought she had experienced harsh winters up in the Carpathians. What she had thought were freezing temperatures were nothing compared to this! Tormund had laughed at that. He had said this was merely winter's kiss. So she had armored herself in every layer of clothing in her new wardrobe--and the bearskin pelt as well--for her workout. She still felt as if she were standing naked under a waterfall of glacial run-off.   
  
At least the chill helped clear her mind of the fog from drinking too much mead last night. Agatha spun and stabbed within a circle of snow tramped down as a crude training ring in the lee of Ruddy Hall. She whipped the spear, head sheathed in rawhide, through a series of two-handed combat forms. In Master Payne's Circus, the spear-carriers learned how to use their spears both on and off-stage. It was of a piece of the troupe's credo of hiding in plain sight as mere actors who had to survive travel through the Wastelands. Agatha had picked up a mish-mash of fighting skills from her fellow actors: Tibetan boxing from Yeti, tumbling from the acrobats, a little Europan fencing, and of course the _qattara_ exercises that Zeetha had started teaching her a month ago.   
  
She wouldn't be continuing those lessons any time soon.  
  
The most important lesson that Zeetha had taught her was awareness. Nothing taught combat reflexes like the age-old Skiffandrian Royal Combat System method of leaping out with a stick to beat the unwary _zumil_ into a quivering mass of bruises. The rusty steel spearhead that attempted to impale her from her blind side was evaded with a feint and riposte. Her lack of glasses did not hamper her much as the enemy pressed its attack. The sense of air shifting around the opponent, the scent of wet wool and leather, the patterns as the spear went after her--everything was grist for the sensory mill as Agatha turned the ambush around into a brutal counter-attack. A feral smile twisted her lips when the combat left the training circle. She danced across the loose snow that she should have sunk up to her thighs. Everything was pressure and angle of attack and inertia and force as she pursued her attacker back and back and back.  
  
The wool scarf over her opponent's face had fallen away by the time the leather-wrapped spearhead pressed into the hollow of her throat. The pressure Agatha gave it was not enough to crush her trachea. It was just enough to suggest it could with the slightest effort. Agatha had felt that many times during Zeetha's training sessions. It was an excellent technique to remind one that the ideal ending of a fight was to not die. The features between fur-lined hood and jacket collar was a lean, hard one that bore a few scars from past combats. The dark eyes were wary yet not panicked at the prospect of being pinned up against the walls of Ruddy Hall.  
  
"So now we've fought," Agatha said. "We must be friends now."  
  
"And if I don't want to be your friend?" Shaggy brown hair escaped from the hood.  
  
"Then that's about ten seconds of agony before the blessed veil of unconsciousness," Agatha replied. "Twenty if you have the stamina for it."  
  
"So you're the southron spearwife who beat my brother like a drum." The woman smirked. "Tormund's a big bag of wind. You could stick a reed up his arse and he'd be a skinpipe. Still, no woman's stood up to him in a long time. Not even his little sister Osha."  
  
"I hope he didn't try to drag you into his bed like apparently every other he's met," Agatha said.  
  
"No, we're not brotherfuckers 'n sister-shaggers like those dragons kings the kneelers bend to." Osha spat into the snow. "It's a foul thing to take a bride from among your family and village."  
  
"Ah, now I see it. It's an exogamy method to encourage diversity in a small, clan-based population," Agatha said. "Humanities were never my strong suit. But the steppe-people's tradition of capture-marriage was covered in a lecture once about inbreeding taboos."  
  
"You chatter like a maester, Agatha," Osha said.   
  
"Maester?" Agatha asked. "Is that akin to a professor? A teacher?"  
  
"They're the chained men that the kneeler lords listen to," Osha said. "Scribblers on parchment, healers, keepers of the ravens that fly from castle to castle south of the Wall. When I was young, a maester came north with some crows to talk with us."  
  
"They sound a bit like a scholarly version of the Corbetites," Agatha mused. "At least there are universities somewhere in this world."  
  
"The maesters don't take in those as have teats," Osha snorted. "Don't see why you'd bother. You're the best fighter I've ever seen. Might end up leading the village if you stay and someone finally lets the air out of my brother."  
  
"Me? A stranger?"   
  
"Us free folk choose who we follow, those with the strength and the skill," Osha said. "Not like the kneelers who bend to some bit of cloth or the clink of coin. I'd join you on a raid south of the Wall when spring comes, in a couple of years."  
  
"A COUPLE OF YEARS?"  
  
"Aye, we hope for a short winter," Osha continued on, blithely. "Though they say the winters are longer and longer since the dragons died."  
  
Agatha stewed on that nugget of information while Osha headed for one of the many log huts scattered willy-nilly in the village. The seasons on this world lasted for variable numbers of years? There had been the Year of Three Winters in Europa's history. Up in the Carpathians, snow didn't melt until a while after it had released its grip in the lowlands. Yet winters lasting over a year? How did these people even survive? Agatha calculated the depth of snow that had accumulated in the village in what they called winter's kiss. She envisioned the average snowfall when the season truly took hold. Sweet lightning, this hamlet would end up buried up to the rooflines.   
  
Agatha hefted the sixty kilograms of logs bound with rope over one shoulder. It was just enogh weight for a cool-down jog around the village. The logs from the vast pile that covered one entire side of Tormund's longhall were lighter than the anvil Zeetha had forced on her. Chuffing like a steam engine, Agatha tromped through the thigh-deep snow around the perimeter of the palisade that guarded the village from the haunted forest beyond. Tormund's village was apparently one of the larger, prosperous settlements of the free folk. Over a hundred souls lived among the anarchic collection of log huts clustered around the strange tree in the center. The ice-choked Antler River flowing past the front gate provided the water and fish to allow such a population to live.  
  
She had to somehow get south. Kylla had to be reunited with her family in the Seven Kingdoms. Agatha's lips curled beneath her scarf at the hints of how these free folk lived. They sounded like the casual mentions of what her Jaegers had committed in service to the Old Heterodynes. That bluff oaf who had taken her in had likely snatched many helpless women like Kylla from their homes. These free folk didn't seem to understand that taking a "kneeler" bride was nothing like the fair fights they were used to when taking wives from other tribes. Kylla had had none of the fighting skills that the free folk taught their daughters. She was alone and helpless in a land, utterly dependent on the man who had abducted her. Lovely--an entire race of people who had adopted the Wulfenbach courtship method.  
  
Agatha narrowed her eyes.  
  
Not if she had anything to say about it.  
  
Agatha came to a stop by the tree that served as the center for the animistic religion followed by these free folk. Apparently it was the same in the lands immediately south of the Wall. Kylla had mentioned another religion that dominated the rest of the Seven Kingdoms that had some similarities to the Church. Although the Faith had a unified leadership instead of the seven feuding papal courts of Europa. What a fascinating example of arboreal evolution. The bone-white wood of this weirwood contrasted with blood-red leaves that still were on the branches in spite of the season. The face carved into the heart-tree had a primitive grandeur like an Orthodox ikon. Agatha eased off a leather mitten to stroke the trunk.  
  
She didn't notice that Osha had managed one small, successful blow on her during their fight.  
  
The blood from the scratch seeped into the wood.  
  
A few seconds later, Agatha shook her head to clear it.  
  
**_By Sir Isaac, what was that?_**  
  
++++  
  
Down deep in the earth, by a river flowing towards a sunless sea, one red eye opened in utter shock.  
  
Seven hells, what had been that?

 


	5. Magic is a sword with no hilt, SCIENCE! is juggling shadowcats dipped in wildfire

The only reason Agatha might have felt foolish about confronting the weirwood at spear-point was the inappropriateness of the instrument. The incident of the Beastie Horse was uppermost in her mind as an example that things might not be as harmless as they appeared. She had no problem believeing that she had awakened a semi-sapient plant whose lust for human flesh had been awakened by contact with the small cut on her right index finger. Any minute now the branches would reach down for her with the insatiable arboreal hunger for man-flesh. What she really needed now was the axe in the wood-pile beside Ruddy Hall that was, of course, on the opposite side of the tree.  
  
What she really wanted was her latest death ray hidden in Baba Yaga an unknown distance in space and time from here. She hadn't even had time for a test-fire after building it as a replacement for the one lost at the Passholt Bridge. What could she use to construct a death ray with the pitiful materials on hand here? Well, if they had bronze then copper might exist for the windings of a dynamo. It would be a stroke of luck indeed if there happened to be lodestone or magnetite about. No, wait. If she could find zinc or some other substance, a voltaic pile with some suitable electrolyte might do as a power source. Mead. Yes. Honey vinegar. That might do in a pinch. It would not be nearly enough for her usual galvanic cannon designs. _She had seen evidence of obsidian and amethyst jewelery. Probably cut and faceted--_  
  
Agatha shifted the intruiging design challenge to the back of her mind as she awaited the inevitable assault by the hell-tree.  
  
And waited.  
  
After a half-hour had passed, Agatha rested the butt of her spear in the snow. One foot tapped in annoyance. If she was facing a monster about to rampage, then it was taking its verdammt sweet time about satisfying its hideous desires. She bit her lip. Usually your average hungry construct would have charged after lying in wait for its victim. They didn't tend to hold back once their true nature was revealed. Ever so carefully, she slipped close enough to lightly poke the trunk with the spear-tip. No reaction. Hmmm. If it did feed on humans, it might rely on a cult within the village that fed victims to in in terrible dark rites. Apparently she was still under the protection of guest right, which exempted her from the audience-participation parts of such a religion.  
  
What she had sensed had not been hostile as such. There had been none of the invasive assault that had come with the Beacon Engine. The sudden rush of sensations as her mind had touched whatever existed within the weirwood had been more like accidentally bumping into another in a dark hallway. There had been no hostility to the entity within. An excited, atonal hum escaped her lips at that. Amazing. It might even be friendly. She edged within the outermost limbs of the tree. Still no attack. Ever so slowly, she reached out with a fingertip. She flexed it to break the scab forming on it. A droplet of blood welled up just as she pressed it to the white bark.  
  
Yggdrasil.  
  
The weirwood's roots burrowed deep into the bowels of the earth where eternal darkness reigned. Crimson-leaved branches reached so high in the heavens that planets and moons had to alter their orbits to pass through its crown. The maw of the face carved into its trunk could have swallowed gas giants. Yet with the slightest shift of perspective what seemed one tree was a vast forest of them forming a single entity. Countless trees with faces laughing and crying and snarling becoming _one vast network. Yes. It's name was legion. Someone had attempted to destroy it. The branches of one side were mere stumps bearing the tell-tale scars of axe and fire. Yet wounded it still stood as great as the World. It encompassed the World._  
  
_The weirwood did not merely encompass space. It spanned **time. She suppressed the nausea of the foreign thoughts whispering in her psyche to grasp the truths within them. Was not time a dimension? It was not merely a mortal mind's perception of the continuity of events. Continuity was itself a space composed of infinitesimal moments whose tick-tock was to the beat within the pulsing of atoms. Like the weirwood, there were branches and forks in the future. The roots encompassed all the myriad possibilities of the past. The trunk was the now where both met. One might perceive the history of the World--nay, the entire universe--as one might discern rainfall and weather from the rings within.**_  
  
**_A thousand three-eyed crows wheeled around the man who hung upon the tree as Christ did upon the cross. No, that metaphor was not appropriate. What she beheld her ewas Odin's sacrifice upon Yggdrasil for wisdom. He was unified with the tree--skin the same hue as its trunk, single red eye the same colour as its leaves, a branch burrowing deep through an empty socket. He had achieved a state of being that Agatha had known once when she had dreamed of the clockwork universe that had finally revealed itself in its glory all ready to be tinkered and tweaked and understood._**  
  
**_Her perspective shifted again as mind touched mind. Blood linked to blood. As in one of the troupe's funhouse mirrors she saw herself reflected. Before herhim was a blazing valkyrie of red-gold hair whipping about as if it were solar flares. Her heart was a broken egg from which flowed eerie blue waters. In one hand she bore a lantern whose light revealed terrible truths where it shone upon shadows. In the other was a smith's hammer fit to forge the mechanisms of the universe itself. She was armored in eldritch geometries and mathematics whose equations would have seared lesser minds had they perceived them._**  
  
**_Pale lips opened to whisper._**  
  
_**"The spark in the darkness--"**_  
  
++++  
  
Kylla stuck her tongue out of her mouth as she carefully carved into the amber. Pate the Miller had taught her woodcarving. He did it often enough crafting the works for the mill had had owned. He hadn't been a bad husband the half-year she had been his wife. He had been five-and-forty when her lord had given her hand to him after she had been caught with Maester Callorm. Pate had been kind enough to her. Other men might have beat a soiled bastard girl. He had been patient, though he had forced his rights upon her often enough. Working amber with bone wasn't near as easy as wood with an iron awl. But she was doing the best she could.  
  
Mistress had been half-drunk when Kylla had approached her in Ruddy Hall for the arms of her house. The symbol of her house was some sort of shellfish called a "trilobite" in gold. Pyg hadn't left her any gold when the wilding had mercifully died. But she had inheirited a few precious chunks of amber. She would gladly sacrifice them for granting Mistress a symbol of her house. She had wasted four of her amber pieces until she had managed to do decent on the fifth. That she was saving for herself as a mark for serving the Mistress. The sixth was to be the best yet. She hoped.  
  
Kylla set aside her work when the yawn escaped her lips. She had been carving throughout the night. She set aside the half-finished stone meant for a cloak-pin; she had already carved a wooden setting with a small strip of bent bronze in it for a pin. Wrapping it up, she looked about the log hut where Pyg had brought her to be his wife. Kylla didn't know if the Mistress would sleep here or if Kylla would be sleeping at the foot of her bed in Ruddy Hall.  
  
A blush colored her cheeks when some of the comments of the villagers echoed in her memory. Already they were saying that Lady Agatha had taken Kylla to wife. Some spearwives did that, like she had heard in bawdy songs where Dornish maids bedded one another. If the Mistress wanted that-- Anything was better than another wilding seizing her for a wife. Kylla would do whatever she needed to do to survive. Bastards learned that quick enough. Might not be so bad. Like the kissing games she had played with the maids in better times. She would just go into herself like she had with the maester and Pate.  
  
The Mistress' hum came clear from outside.  
  
Kylla peeked out past the deerhide covering the front doorway of her hut.  
  
Oh gods. Oh gods. What was Mistress doing? Kylla charged through the snow to tear Mistress away from the blasphemy she was committing. She was defacing the heart tree. The Mistress worked with her spear-head on the face of the weirwood in a blur. Kylla faltered as she watched the bronze edge work. Time seemed to flow and stretch in strange ways. It was impossible. Yet Mistress carved with a skill that Pate wouldn't have been able to match even with his best tools. The simple lines of the heart tree's face were deepened. It was becoming like a portrait.  
  
A portrait of a lean, hard face white as bone with red-sap marking a raven-shaped mark on its right cheek.  
  
Behind her, she heard a shocked gasp.  
  
"The Bloodraven," the Giantsbane choked out.  
  
Then the face _moved._  
  
"WINTER IS COMING."


	6. Tea and Ravens

Agatha could still hear the music. It had suffused the gestalt within the weirdwood collective. There had been the steady beat of sap moving in time with sun and season as background refrain. Added to it were the billions of simple melodies of insect and squirrel and bird joining their songs to the beat. Above them all was the choir of minds--arias of memory and thought--that sang the songs of earth back to itself. She longed to join in. Music had always soothed her frustrations when she had suffered under the locket's thrall. When she had tested the Silverlodeon, the wild joy of feeling her gift unshackled at last had been the equal to the first time she had seen a device of hers work.  
  
Sweet lightning. Why not construct the Silverlodeon anew within the conscousnous-space of the weirdwood? Heee! Here she had thought herself marooned in some vast wasteland. All this time there had been a delicious mystery to explore and analyze right before her eyes. It would be so _easy_. She could rebuild the Silverlodeon in the idealized form rather than the lash-up job she had managed with Wastelands salvage. It would be a pure construct of will that would have all the bells and whistles. Even the afterburner and the mirrored ball that would act as both light show and focus for a death ray. Then she would play a glorious song indeed.  
  
She sipped a fragrant oolong to calm her nerves. An amusing clank-samovar puffed in the center of her table set on the terrace outside the tea-house. It was a quiet Sunday morning on the Place du Tetre atop the butte of Montmartre. The faint hum of the wind turbine atop the Moulin Rouge could be heard from down the hill. The artists had set up their easels in the square across the street. The only other customer was a flaneur in a well-cut coat the colour of smoke with a crimson silk shirt beneath. He had selected a table beneath the shade of a tree. Doubtless his skin required protection from the sun's rays. It had the distinctive bone-white hue of an albino.  
  
Agatha's fingers froze a millimeter away from a gingerbread trilobite.  
  
She had never visited Paris.  
  
These were her mother's memories.  
  
She was still lost in a dream-state.  
  
Thankfully, included in her mother's memory of this morning was the elegant and very lethal steam-pistol tucked into a garter.  
  
"Peace, my lady." One blood-red eye winked. "I only murder kin when calling a parley. You are quite safe from me."  
  
"The last time I trusted a smooth-talking gentleman," Agatha replied, aiming at his heart, "it didn't work out very well. Get out of my head."  
  
"I could not invade your thoughts even should I wish it," the man said. "This meeting ground is conjured from the shadow of the Other cast upon yout soul."  
  
"Must have gone deep into a fugue," Agatha muttered. She started when she recognized the winestain mark on his cheek. "You. You're the one hanging from the tree. Who are you?"  
  
"I had many names when I was quick: bastard, sorceror, kinslayer." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Bloodraven, for the mark I bore upon my cheek. If I have a true name, t'would be Brynden, for what my mother named me as I nursed at her breast."  
  
"That's an interesting resume of yours," Agatha said.  
  
"All I did, I did for the realm and for the love of my brother." Brynden's lips twisted bitterly. "Seek not the gratitude of kings lest you be disappointed. My honour I sacrificed to grant the boy his crown. For that, he granted me the mercy of the black."  
  
"You didn't stop sacrificing, did you?" Agatha lowered the pistol.  
  
"The Sworn Brother's oath: the watcher on the walls, the sword in the darkness," Bryden said. "I found the dark and the strength it brings. But my time grows short. I cannot shield the realms of men for long."  
  
"No. No, no, no!" Agatha set her cup down so sharply it cracked apart. "I have just escaped the grip of an existential horror. I'm done. All I want to do is head south. Maybe find a quiet corner of the world to terrify the local peasants into submission so I can do some research in peace."  
  
Bryden raised a single pale brow.  
  
"That last part might be my mother leaking through." Agatha kneaded her temple. "Or my ancestors. They weren't very nice people."  
  
"Seek tales of my ancestor Maegor," Brynden replied. "Or of the Valyrians from which we sprang from, who ruled the east through fire and blood."  
  
"I'd love to trade atrocity stories," Agatha said. "Another time."  
  
"I would hope to speak again." Brynden caught her left hand. "I have not spent such pleasant company with a woman since the last time I was abed with Shiera."  
  
Agatha flushed beet-red as his lips pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. Then there was a flutter of wings. She rubbed where his lips had touched as she watched the raven fly away. Gotterdamerung, not again! What was it about her that attracted interfering men with sketchy agendas? She was not letting this Brynden drag her into another _adventure_ where she was flung from the blast furnace to the Bessemer converter. She was going to keep this simple. Survive the winter. Get Kylla to the Wall so that she could be repatriated. Talk her own way past the Wall to whatever resembled civilization in this world.  
  
Well, maybe stick around a little come spring to improve matters some. If she could help Tormund's people out, then they might have less need to raid across the wall. There was definite potential with the investment of some sweat and Spark. A mill, a forge, some agricultural tools better than a digging stick--all these could help them rise from subsidence to what they might consider prosperity. It was the least she owed Tormund for sheltering her. Then head south to see what life she could make in this world. But **no adventures!** Master Payne had been right. She was not the Baron. Neither was she about to bounce around like that madman Othar.  
  
Agatha restored the cup with a hint of will. Leaving behind several sous for a tip, she headed for the Rue Foyatier to descend into the city proper. She might as well explore this Paris of her mother's memories while she had the chance. It would be her only chance to see the most fashionable city in a Europa she may never see again. Agatha froze when she came to what should have been the staircase descending the butte. Spread out before her was not Paris. It was as if she was at some towering height looking down upon the entire continent. Below her were lands of moors and rainforests, hills and rivers, mountains and fields, fertile vales and burning desert sands.  
  
A cold wind blew against the back of her neck.  
  
_Winter is coming._  
  
Agatha turned about and looked north.  
  
To cold and death and bright blue eyes shining with ancient hatred and malice.  
  
++++  
  
_Qork._  
  
_Qork._  
  
The ravens had been roosting upon the heart tree ever since the sorceress had fallen into dream. Tormund Giantsbane rubbed his chin at the black flock that had come to call the weirdwood home. Ravens were the cousins to crows. Crows were tricksy birds, indeed. Old Bloodraven had been the tricksiest of the crows before he had vanished twenty years before. Dark tales had been told of the lord bastard even as far as beyond-the-Wall before Bloodraven had ever taken the black. A thousand eyes and one, the kneelers had whispered. Free folk knew well that that meant: skinchanger. The Bloodraven and the Crow's Teeth that had come with him to the Wall had been the bane of the free folk in Tormund's youth. It was said that not a single raider made it over the Wall alive in the Bloodraven's tme.  
  
There had been mead drunk aplenty beyond-the-Wall when the news came the Bloodraven had vanished a-ranging. Good riddance to the sorcerous bastard. Only, ravens were cousins to crows. Tricksy creatures. Tormund glanced sidelong at the heart tree. The face that had been carved into it before Agatha had done her spell was back. But if you looked at it just so, you saw the other face that seemed to leap out of the bark. Har! Old Bloodraven hadn't disappeared. He had managed his greatest trick. The greatest skinchangers were the greenseers of the Children, who could cast their souls into the weirwoods. So that was where the Bloodraven had gone...  
  
_Qork._  
  
It was just the winter's cold setting Tormund's teeth to chattering. He forced himself to turn his back on the unkindness of ravens. The warmth of Ruddy Hall was a balm. The kneeler girl who Agatha had taken to wife had set a decent fire in the open hearth. Kylla had dragged Agatha's pallet as close to the flames as she could without singing his guest. Agatha had been dreaming in some half-mad slumber for two days. Drawn in the earth beside her bed were strange pictures and writing that Tormund couldn't understand. It looked a bit like the guts of a mill all stirred up in ways that hurt his mind if he looked at it too hard.  
  
Green eyes fluttered open.  
  
"I. Hate. Destinies." Agatha sat upright. "Herr Tormund. Good morning. Or is it evening?"  
  
"Cloud`s so thick today it could be midnight." Tormund said. "Could you see your way to telling his pets to leave us be? None o' us can pray for the birdshit."  
  
"I'll send a note." Agatha frowned. "No sense in pretending I'm just another pretty face, huh?"  
  
"You're a sorceress, like your mother," Tormund said.  
  
"NOT like my mother," Agatha snapped. "You're taking this better than I expected. Most peasants at home would have been out with torches and pitchforks seeing me in the madness place."  
  
"Madness place?"  
  
"I--" Agatha breathed deep. "I'm a Spark."  
  
"Is that the name for witches where you were born?"  
  
"Hard to explain," Agatha said. "Are there legends of gifted smiths among your people? Like Wayland or Hephaestus, who could forge wonders and treasure?"  
  
"Sure. There's the grumkins." Tormund laughed. "Though you're sight prettier than any o' those bearded dwarves! So a Spark's one that can smith their magic."  
  
"Yes." Agatha grimaced. "Only...we don't just create wonders."  
  
The chill returned anew.  
  
"Sparks forge nightmares, too."


	7. Unmaskings

It was a relief to come out of hiding.  
  
The babble from the drugged wine didn't count. That had been empty-headed chatter which, by Zeus, she wished to erase from the historical record. Especially some of the things she had said concerning Gil. As she told the sad tale, she felt a weight she hadn`t realized she had been carrying fall away. All her life she had been living wearing masks. There had been the mask created by the locket when she had been stupid, bumbling Agatha Clay. There had been impersonating Olga during her time in the Circus, and hiding her true nature from her newfound friends. The only people she could be open with were the Jaegers and Krosp. It hadn`t been enough. She had never been herself.  
  
Good thing Krosp had schooled her in quick assembly of a bug-out bag. Agatha assembled what she hoped was a week's supply of food and sundries in the buckskin rucksack. She watched out of the corner of her eye as Tormund studied the sketches. Explaining everything had taken a lot of pictures. There were drawings scratched in the dirt and done in charcoal on hides. Just getting across what "clank" and "construct" meant had needed half of Ruddy Hall's floor. Her host lingered on the sketches of the Hive Engine and the slaver wasps. She laid her hand upon the hilt of her bone knife as the silence stretched on longer and longer. If he called the mob, she might be able to get past the palisade gate before the other villagers could react.  
  
"This Wulfenbach lord o' yours, what would have he done when he was told about your mother and you?" Tormund asked.  
  
"Killed me, probably." Agatha shrugged. "I wouldn't have blamed him. Better that than being the vessel for the Other's return."  
  
"How much of that mother o' yours warged into your head?" Tormund said.   
  
"I would _never_ create those things." Agatha clenched a fist. "But if you're worried, now's your chance. Take your best shot."  
  
"Tells me all I need to know, Agatha." Tormund grinned widely. "Har, you're a fighter, you are. We'd have a merry fight indeed if we ever came o'er the wall after you went south."  
  
"I think you'd find the Wall's defenses improved," Agatha said.  
  
Tormund's eyes flicked to the diagram of Mister Tock.  
  
"Whatever customs you have among yourselves," Agatha continued, "there's no excuse for stealing women from the so-called kneelers. I had it done to me by the Baron. So you bet I'll come after anyone who kidnaps a helpless girl like Kylla."  
  
"Do you know why we free folk live beyond-the-Wall?" Tormund said. "'Tis because the magnars o' old said this is my field you're tilling. This is my woods you're hunting in. The new wife o' yours, she's mine for the first night. Them lords and the kneelers who bent to them drove us here. Then they raised a great big damn wall."  
  
"That's no excuse," Agatha said. "You can trade for what you need instead of raiding. Like furs and amber. Keeping up the quarrel with the 'kneelers' is that same kind of thinking that caused the Long War in Europa."  
  
"Pity. You'd make a fine raider." Tormund jerked a thumb at a diagram of Castle Wulfenbach. "Wouldn't it be fine to sail past those crows atop the Wall, showing them my arse!"  
  
"You wouldn't want to awake the Old Heterodyne in me," Agatha said. "An Old Heterodyne would shatter the Wall like glass. Then burn everything from Ruddy Hall to the southern tip of Westeros to a smoking ruin. And we'll need that Wall to hide behind."  
  
"The white walkers," Tormund said, pale as the legendary ice demons. "The gods spoke to you. Gave you a vision."  
  
"Shining blue eyes and cold death."  
  
"Well. The gods brought you here for some reason," Tormund said. "I'd be a poor Speaker to Gods if I spurned 'em. You're my guest here still whatever happens if you go south. And you'll find smiths and healers are welcomed in these lands."  
  
"I will do my best to help, and defend you in case you're attacked," Agatha said. "I hope we can part friends."  
  
"'Course we can," Tormund said. "Just remember, south o' the wall, you'll be called to bend the knee. Unless you want to fight the whole damn world."  
  
"Guess I'm going to be an Old Heterodyne after all."  
  
Tormund's laugh shook soot down from the rafters. Chuckling, he wandered out of the Hall. Not before lingering before a depiction of Castle Wulfenbach with a predatory gleam in his eye. Riffling through her sack, Agatha opened a pouch of travel-meat to take the edge off hunger raised by the spark-fugue. The stuff was a dense mix of powdered meat and berries mixed with melted fat. It wasn't close to Taki's delicious cooking, and it sat in her stomach like a dirgible's anchor. But her calculations of its nutritional value told her that it would keep her marching for a day on a pouch's worth.  
  
She thought about Tormund as she laboured through her meal. He had reacted far better than she had expected to her revelations. Although she had left out a few minor details as to Europan medical science. She hadn't specified that many constructs were revived from the dead. That might have hit too close to home to a man worried about the Others and their legions of undead. Pure prejudice, that. There were many sorts of undead in Europa who were loyal and productive citizens. Still, Tormund hadn't chased her out even after revealing the full explanation of her mother's Hive Engines and slaver wasps  
  
An optimist would say that Tormund was a fair-minded man.  
  
A fugitive who had been schooled by a cynical talking cat--but she repeated herself--would think that Tormund might see her as the perfect tool to seize power. Or he might be so terrified of the Others that putting himself in the power of a sorceress who periodically went into controlled insanity to work her spells was the better option. Krosp's voice was joined in by Zeetha's in pointing out that guest right may not cover arranging an ambush by warriors from another village. Tormund reminded her very much of a Jaeger: the crude, bluff killer who was much more cunning than one might think from initial impressions. One didn't rise to leadership in an anarchic society such as the free folk on strength alone.  
  
Still, she had given him more than enough chances to kill her as an abomination before men and however many gods these people worshipped. Agatha decided that he would at least let her live as long as she was useful. It was an old arrangement between Sparks and mundane rulers that had existed before the Great Spark Houses had risen to power after the fall of the Storm King. She grimaced at the thought she might have to trade her skills for patronage when she settled in the south. That...didn't sit well with her. There were all sorts of politics and quarrels that she could be drawn into. Maybe she could just find some place to set up an atelier where she could earn the odd commission while pursuing her own research. Specifically, research into how to defend against eldritch beings of ice who commanded zombie armies.  
  
Well, copious amounts of flammables were always a good option.  
  
Hmmm. Tormund had said something about ravens.  
  
Agatha peeked outside the hall at the heart tree.  
  
_Qork_  
  
"Brynden," Agatha said, fists on her hips, "I appreciate you keeping eyes on me. This is just excessive. Along with creepy and obsessive."  
  
_Qork!_  
  
"Come on, I can't get into that much trouble," Agatha said.  
  
The ravens as one cawed in raucous laughter.  
  
"Very funny. Now, shoo!" Agatha waved her hands dismissively. "You're making the locals nervous."  
  
The ravens spiraled up as one into the sky. Two flitted over to perch on each of Agatha's shoulders.  
  
"Not leaving me without two minders, I see." Agatha regarded them. "I have my own Huginn and Muninn."  
  
_Qork._  
  
++++  
  
Mistress was out of the Age of Heroes.   
  
People often overlooked Kylla. Life as a bastard of her lord`s brother, killed by a bandit`s blade, had taught her to be quiet as a mouse around her highborn relatives. Only Maester Callorm had noticed her. So she had stayed silent in a corner as Mistress schooled the Giantsbane in who she truly was. Gods, Mistress` people were greater than even the Valyrians! They could fly and wield lightning and work flesh as easily as iron on an anvil. Mistress must have been the greatest of her kind. Had she not roused the gods of tree and stone from their long slumber? Two ravens sent by the gods now attended to her as her servants.  
  
Clutching her gift in a sweaty fist, Kylla tiptoed over to where Mistress was hunched over a branch of weirwood. Mistress had cut it open with blade to separate out the inner wood from the bark. The eerie humming that Mistress did when she was in the holy madness from which she drew her magics seemed to drill into Kylla's ears. Mistress had teased out the inner wood into thin strands. With another hand, Mistress drew on a wooden board in charcoal. Kylla couldn't make out what it was: some strange plant or a river with a thousand branches.  
  
Heart in her mouth, Kylla coughed before mutely offering the amber pin of Mistress' arms.  
  
"Oh! Kylla!" Mistress seemed to snap awake. Her smile had, for once, the normal number of teeth. "Thank you! This is great work."  
  
"It's a pin for your cloak, Mistress." Kylla tapped her throat.  
  
Mistress' smiled curdled.  
  
"Did--did I do wrong, Mistress?" Stupid, stupid, stupid....  
  
"No. Not your fault." Mistress took the pin. "Bad memories. I wore something like this for years. There was an, ah, spell laid into it that crippled my mind."  
  
"Your enemy the Baron did that to you?" Kylla asked.  
  
"Worse. My own uncle. My foster parents said it was for my own good." Mistress closed her eyes. "I never had a chance to forgive them before they died."  
  
"If Mistress would grant the honor," Kylla said, shyly handing over the flawed pin. "I'd swear to your service."  
  
"You don't have to do that." Mistress laid a hand on her shoulder. "I will get you home as soon as we can."  
  
"Please. I may be a bastard. But I was a good lady-in-waiting," Kylla said. "A highborn woman needs as such when traveling."  
  
"I've never had a servant before," Mistress said. "I was a minion growing up."  
  
"Then let me be a minion," Kylla said, wondering at the odd word.  
  
"Kylla, my life often becomes a Heterodyne story," Mistress said. "That's fun reading on the page or watching a play. In real life, it meants a lot of terror and screaming. And in Heterodyne stories, the minions are often the ones who die. I can't say you'll be safe."  
  
"How can it be worse 'n being dragged here, into this frozen hell," Kylla spat out. "We're all going to die when the Others come. Least I'll be useful afore I rise with blue eyes shining."  
  
" _That. Will. Not. Happen._ " Every word left Mistress' lips with the force of a scorpion's bolt. " _I will keep you safe, Kylla Snow, any way I can. Is that understood?_ "  
  
"Yes, Mistess!"  
  
"Good." Mistress still hesitated. "The Heterodynes weren't very nice before my father and uncle. They really were terrible people."  
  
"Could they be worse'n the Boltons?" Kylla said. "There's tales still they go out hunting for victims to flay in the dark, to make their pink cloaks."  
  
"My ancestors would have thought that pretty tame."  
  
Kylla froze.  
  
Then she offered her breast to be badged.  
  
Because in the end, there never was any choice, was there?


	8. Out and about

Each breath escaping through the woolen scarf formed a cloud of steam as impressive as that from a Corbetite locomotive. Agatha huffed as she tried to keep up with Osha as they inspected their trapline. She was still unused to the bear-paws upon which the spearwife could navigate as easily as across a summer meadow. Muscles that even Zeetha`s training had somehow missed twinged in dull agony. The pain in the background was at least warm compared to the lazy wind that sent drifts of snow skirling up into the air. Something of a northern joke: the winds were lazy because they blew right through you instead of taking the trouble to go around.  
  
All in all, Agatha would rather have been buried underneath a mountain of furs with Kylla as a living hot-water bottle. Unfortunately that would have meant she would have been relegated to being Tormund`s woman. Spearwives were expected to do what the free folk called "man's work"--raiding, hunting, and such--to keep their position in this society. Shirk that? You were a bride instead who tended the fires and did menial work. Agatha had had quite enough of that her first few days in the circus as Trainee Beet Peeler. So she was out here stumbling through snow that would swallow her neck-deep if she didn't have two squash rackets of rawhide and wood strapped to her feet.  
  
It also spared her the cabin fever of being trapped in Ruddy Hall listening to another of Tormund's stories.  
  
So label the experience exhilarating, rather in the same way the madboy who has gotten the drop on you with a doomsday weapon is charmingly eccentric At least she would be spectacularly fit once spring came. Agatha forced herself from wondering how close it was to absolute zero to focus on Osha. Inspecting the trapline with her was an education in and of itself. It was all too easy to dismiss the free folk as ignorant primitives. What they were was highly adapted to the harshest conditions Agatha had ever encountered. A week with Osha had taught her more about wilderness survival than Lars' lectures. Tormund's sister could have even lived for up to a week in the Wastelands back home before dying messily.  
  
Osha probed with her spearshaft for any treacherous hollows as she approached one of the traps. It had been set up in a hollow of a tree where an animal might find shelter. It was a device of Agatha's design--an intricate construction of bone and leather cords designed to deliver a swift killing blow in place of the crude snares and leg-hold traps of the free folk. There were times when a lingering death was merited--such as, say, Omar von Zinzer's behavior--but Agatha thought herself a kind person. A starving animal in winter deserved a quick end. Osha approached the trap with great care. She was still a bit nervous around spark-work, which spoke well of her survival instincts. The trap had been sprung. But where was the corpse?  
  
Osha drew a wriggling, wiry-pelted thing out that trumpeted distress through it's tiny trunk.  
  
Agatha cursed in the rich store of invective of the common Romanian idiom, with imprecations in six other languages thrown in.  
  
"Mimmoths!" Agatha snarled. "There must have been a nest of them in the Beacon Engine."  
  
"One o' those constructs from your lands?" Osha laughed. "It's like a giant's steed got wet and shrunk to a mouse."  
  
"They aren't jokes. They're pests," Agatha said. "Mimmoths breed faster than rabbits, are cross-fertile with mice, and are attracted to complex machinery. Mimmoths in a lab can cause even more disasters than your average Spark."  
  
"Good eating?" Osha asked.  
  
"Well, yes, the Circus's best selling confection was chocolate-dipped fried mimmoths--"  
  
*SNAP*  
  
"Another gift o' yours, then," Osha replied, tossing the ex-mimmoth into an emptied travel-meat bag. "Any meat that can live through winter's another child lives to be named."  
  
"Just keep your mimmoth ranch away from any workshop of mine," Agatha said. "So, full-sized mammoths exist here? None have existed in my world--naturally--since the last Ice Age. The Heterodyne war-mammoths that were the original stock for mimmoths were brewed up from frozen corpses found in Siberia."  
  
"Not many o' them these days," Osha said. "You find them up in the Frostfangs, in the hidden places where the hot springs flow. Near as rare as giants, them who tamed them like garrons."  
  
"It would be amazing to take an expedition into that area," Agatha mused. "To see mammoths and direwolves that weren't created in a lab! To meet these giants!"  
  
"Planning on staying?" Osha said, just a touch too casually.  
  
"Oh. No. I might hire you on as native guides once I establish myself in the south," Agatha said.  
  
"O' course, my lady." Osha sardonically sketched a parody of a bow. "This is the last of them. I'm of a mind to take a dip in that other gift o' yours."  
  
"Race you!"  
  
Osha took off at a practiced lope that had Agatha floundering several meters behind her. Zeetha's teasing voice whispered in her ear: are you going to take that? No! Teeth bared, Agatha pushed herself until she was neck and neck with the spearwife. The cold was forgotten in the thrill of competition. Both women were breathing heavily when they reach the first tendrils of sulphurus mist in the forest just north of the village. They undressed while still racing one another. What few notions of modesty that had survived being en dishabille backstage had been dissolved by two months in a climate where personal space killed. You snuggled up against anyone you could if you wanted to live through the night. Agatha and Osha shucked off their breeches last before diving in shallow arcs into the steaming water. Both broke the surface at the same time.  
  
Agatha basked in heavenly, _hot_ brimstone-scented water. The pool was quite deep. The Beacon Engine had melted its way down quite far into this world's crust. The resulting convulsion had created a sinkhole thirty meters across and fifteen deep in the center. The temperature of the pool at the edges where snowmelt mingled with the hot spring was that of a warm bath. In the center, the plume rising from the earth was just below scalding. She backstroked out until she was at a point where there was a comfortable median between the two extremes. At one spot, a smaller plume of hot water burbled in a cloud of bubbles that eased the ache from her body. So this was why everyone made a fuss about taking the waters.  
  
Ha! She could establish a spa here. It would the sensation for the elite of the Seven Kingdoms. The tourist posters wrote themselves. Regular airship flights to an exotic locale far from the cares of civilization. Be fascinated by the quaint folkways of the natives. Daily visits to one of the great wonders of the world. Why, she could see the town rise in her mind. There would be a comfortable hotel in a rustic, primitive style to evoke Ruddy Hall. Although she vowed it would have far better insulation. Heat from the geothermal springs could be channeled through hypocaust tunnels beneath the streets to melt any snow. _No. That was too...unambitious. Why heat the streets when one could erect a dome of steel and glass to cover the entire town? Ha! Take that, winter! Outside, a frozen wasteland. Within, an oasis of life that defied the grasping chill. **Never again would anyone suffer frostbite. And then, oh yes, she had dreamed of this, the magnificent possibilities inherent in geothermal power. She could see the turbines spin as steam from the very bowels of the earth brought the lightning--**_  
  
A clump of snow landed in her face.  
  
Sputtering, Agatha wiped her face free of it. Huginn cawed from above upon the branch of an oak upon the bank. It overhung the pool enough for the bird to innocently dislodge a snowfall. Or perhaps not so innocently. She slipped further beneath the water as she realized who might have been peering through the raven's eyes. Some vestiges of her old sense of propriety were still intact, it seemed. Well, maybe it was a good thing it had distracted her. She had been deep into the madness place. Deep enough to consider settling here. There was a tantalizing challenge to the idea of creating a fortress of DOOM from near-nothing. It just wasn't practical. Wherever could she get the tools?  
  
Oh!  
  
What was that, between the roots of the tree?  
  
"Hey, Osha!" Agatha pried loose what she had found. "Look what I found!"  
  
"Dragonglass." Osha examined the fist-sized chunk of obsidian. "That's good trade goods. Worth a stack o' furs easy."  
  
"You do trade with the outside world?" Agatha asked.  
  
"Sure. What do you think the trapline's for?" Osha said. "Come spring, we'll load up the canoes to head down the Antler to the salt-water clans. They trade through Eastwatch and with the few ships that call upon the shore."  
  
"I owe Tormund an apology. I was pretty condescending about alternatives to raiding." Agatha hefted the obsidian. "Think this could get me an anvil and blacksmith's tools?"  
  
"The crow's never let that slip past the Wall," Osha said. "The only iron comes past s cooking pots 'n the like. Steel they don't let through at all. They sink any smugglers and hunt any free folk who sneak past with steel or the workings of it."  
  
"Wow. What do they do with smiths?"  
  
Osha's features darkened.  
  
Uh-oh.  
  
++++  
  
Grumkins took up a fair bit of space. Ruddy Hall had become a snugger home for Tormund and his clan since Agatha had settled in. In the past two moon's turns, she had laid claim to near a third of the hall. Trestle tables and split-log shelves along one wall were filled with all sorts of grumkinly tools she had created with what her wife had given her. With a bronze awl and stone-headed hammer she had chipped and carved the days and nights away. Tormund had had to stuff wool in his ears to get any sleep at all. The gods-damned humming wormed its way through anyhow.  
  
Well, a little lost sleep was worth the fun, wasn't it? Agatha told the most fascinating stories. Oh, not the tales he spun out of bluster and guff. Nor was it the southron fancy stuff of knights mincing about their ladies fair. Boring that. If those crabs-in-plate had the balls, they'd have the ladies kicking and screaming over their horses rather than split lances in tourneys. No, Agatha's stories were finer than that. Many a night when not grumkining she had told them the adventures of her father and uncle. Half the time she had to stop to explain what the hells something was, but that was fun in its own way. Other times she told even stranger tales. One night half the village stood out in the balls-freezing cold as she told them what the stars _really_ were.  
  
It should have been boring.  
  
Agatha made it fun.  
  
Like there was a world out there beyond the cold, hard lands that you could travel to in your mind.  
  
The door banged open. Agatha stomped in smelling of brimstone. She'd been down to that pool her mother's throne had created. Tormund risked a smirk. Oh, good thing her eyes weren't as good as they should be. He and the other men had a nice hide set up to spy whenever she took it into her mind to bathe. The angry expression on her face wiped the sly grin off his lips. Hope she hadn't found out. While he'd enjoyed their tussle, his bruises had bruises atop them from that fight moon's turns ago. Toregg's arm was still mending. He'd be able to tell when the snows were coming for the rest of his life.  
  
Agatha sat down at a table. She produced a flint that she started tapping against a good-sized dragonglass stone.  
  
Ruddy Hall was silent save for the knapping of obsidian and the crackle of fire in the rebuilt hearth.  
  
"I trusted you," Agatha said, not looking up.  
  
"Where did I do you wrong, girl?" Tormund said, puzzled.  
  
"When you didn't tell me what this Night's Watch did when it heard about smiths among the free folk," Agatha said. Tap-tap-tap. "That they do their best to hunt down anyone with the skills to work iron and steel."  
  
"That? I didn't think it worth the bother to mention," Tormund replied. "If the crows ever tried, you'd paint the forest red with their guts."  
  
"I don't want to get into a fight with them!" Agatha snapped. "That's your plan, isn't it? Have me start teaching your people smithwork. Then when the Watch finds out, I have such a big target on my back I can't go south."  
  
"Har! That'd have been a cunning plan if I'd thought of it!" Tormund said. "No, I just thought you'd end up back here after the first time a southron lord tried to make you bend the knee. 'S why me 'n Osha plan to head south with you when summer comes. I want to see the fur fly!"  
  
"I don't know whether to feel betrayed or depressed," Agatha said. "Tormund, I can actually co-exist with these lords. Just because I don't intend to bend the knee means I'll be fighting them for the rest of my life."  
  
"And when some lord whose lands you settled on orders you to make your wonders for one o' his wars?"  
  
Agatha's lips tightened.  
  
"And if he threatens you and yours if you don't?" Tormund continued. "Or says you've to marry one of his sons, so that his line will carry down your Spark?"  
  
CRACK as the dragonglass split down the middle.  
  
"Aye," Tormund said, the cold winds howling outside. "You said it yourself. Maybe you'd be a Heterodyne of old. And that's what the lords south who stole from us all we had and drove us beyond-the-Wall deserve."


	9. The Mendacious Promise of Pastry

It had been a savage battle.  
  
There had been times when she had not thought she would win.  
  
Yet, her opponent lay vanquished before her.  
  
She felt so empty.  
  
Agatha winced. The emptiness was metaphorical. She massaged her aching stomach while risking another sip of tea. It was a herbal blend she had learned from Countess Marie meant to counter the effects of dyspepsia. It was as a thimble of water tossed upon a phlogiston spill to her digestive system. Mopping her brow, she surveyed the battlefield upon which she had waged her grim struggle. All that remained of the confection of spun sugar, Parisian pastry, and dark chocolate was a scattering of crumbs. It had been the most decadent cake that she could summon from the fragments of her mother's memories. It had promised freedom from her troubles.  
  
The cake had lied. Dangerous noises came from the vicinity of her navel. It was completely unfair that one had to suffer the effects of gluttony within one's own dream. Curing her depression in an orgy of pastry-binging had been a failure. Well, at least it was still summer in Montmartre. It would always be summer in Montmartre. Beyond the foot of the _butte_ were the snowy forests of beyond-the-Wall. A swift-running river whose waters were milky with glacial silt ran near its foot. Within this construct of Lucrezia's, the acacia trees on the square were evergreen. Artists, bohemians, and others of the demimonde peopled its cafes and bars. One could lose oneself in the winding cobblestoned streets on the hill to find hidden gems.  
  
Like her yearning for a peaceful life, it was an illusion conjured by sleeping fantasies that would dissipate come the dawn.  
  
Wonderful. Now she was bloated and maudlin.  
  
A _qork_ came from atop a tree. A crow with a monocle over one eye poked its beak from amid the leaves. Agatha smiled as she waved at it. Fluttering down, it shifted into the lanky form of Brynden Rivers. His flaneur's outfit had shifted to the military-intellectual style of the Wulfenreich. Despite the heat, he wore a smoke-grey greatcoat over a brocade weskit of albino dragons on black. He doffed his wide-brimmed hat once he was beneath the shadow of the table's umbrella. His ivory hair was tied back in a Viennese dandy's ponytail. The smoked-glass pince-nez were pushed down to reveal eyes both whole and empty. In one hand was an elegant weirwood walking stick. A waiter brought a chess set and Brynden's usual espresso shot a moment after he sat down.  
  
"If my lady wishes to recover," Brynden said, "our usual game may wait for another day."  
  
"Don't you dare judge me." Agatha set aside her tea for a small _digestif_ of calvados. "Sometimes a girl has needs."  
  
"Women do have their indulgences." Brynden flicked a crumb across the dessert plate. "Mine sister Shiera was fond of being fed sweetmeats after love. I was only a fool once to jape about eating one too many."  
  
"Talk about keeping it in the family," Agatha muttered. Brynden's casual references to his family's morals reminded her that he was not Europan.  
  
"You did not truly think it you would be left alone, did you?" Brynden asked. "You are a woman of power, my lady. Were you of Valyrian blood when dragons flew, you would have lead a flight of them for the Freehold. Such qualities invite conflict no matter your intentions."  
  
"I thought that no one here knew about the Heterodynes," Agatha said. "There wasn't any of the baggage from my family's legacy. Now I find out that if I try to help Tormund's people, the order sworn to defend civilization from the ice-demons will kill me."  
  
"One might argue you owe them nothing to teach then the arts of forging." Brynden sipped his espresso. "The traps you have crafted, the instruments to increase the yield of their small fields, the medicines you have brewed--you have repaid Tormund's hospitality half a hundred times over."  
  
"You would have had me killed if you were Lord Commander now," Agatha said.  
  
"In an instant. Mistake me not, I have had otherwise innocents dead for far less." Brynden spoke as if he were commenting on the weather. "Although I hope I could have persuaded you to come south, then had Tormund's village slaughtered in the guise of an attack by rival clans."  
  
Her gorge rose in a way not at all due to her recent gluttony.  
  
"Peace. My watch now is not concerned with savages in skins." Brynden contemplated the dregs in his cup. "If you would bear the advice of a meddling old courtier, accepting Tormund's suit would be wise if you wish to retain your freedom."  
  
"He's twice my age!" Agatha said.  
  
"Highborn maids have wedded older lords," Brynden replied. "You mistake love for politics. Tormund offers you strong seed to ensure the future of your line. He would not demand you submit to him as a wife among civilized realms would. He is besotted with you, though in truth he himself would admit he falls in love several times a season."  
  
"Then why shouldn't I just go full barbarian princess while I'm at it?" Agatha snapped. "I could preside over a brutal contest to the death for my favours while sitting haughtily on the throne built from the bones of my enemies."  
  
Brynden's cup shattered.  
  
"Stop imagining me in a shadowcat High Priestess oufit," Agatha said. "And kindly don't spy on me at the pool while I am bathing. I already have plans to deal with that little habit of Tormund's."  
  
"Gods be good, I could just see you at my brother's court." Bryden cleaned the cuts on his palm with a napkin. "Daeron wouild have adored you. Baelor would have set before you great works. You could have spared us so much--the spring sickness, the drought, the ironborn reaving."  
  
"It wouldn't have worked out," Agatha said. "I can't see myself as a Van Rijn dependent on the patronage of a sovereign. Anyway, you would have had me assassinated if you thought I was a threat to your family's power."  
  
"Shiera would have poisoned you first, after ferretting out the secrets of your arts." Brynden nodded. "If you would stand as sovereign of your fate, then you must pay the price it demands."  
  
"I fantasized about not staying at Mechanicsburg," Agatha said. "Just continuing on with the Circus without bothering anyone. But Sturmhalten proved there was no escape."  
  
"Despair does not suit you, my lady." Brynden tapped the chess set. "A game or three to chase the shadows away."  
  
Mechanisms within the rosewood compartment underneath the black-and-white board whirred to life. The squares of the back rows slid down briefly before rising up with the miniature clank pieces in position. The original of her mother's memories had been in a Storm King theme with Andronicus Valois facing Bludtharst's forces. The pattern had shifted to a Westerosi style as Brynden had become more invested in their nightly contests. Septons had replaced the rooks. The maesters had supplanted the bishops. Instead of king and queen, it was the lord keeping the holdfast from check and mate.  
  
Chess had never been her game. Learning the basics was expected of every educated Europan. She had memorized the standard texts on strategies and gambits as a matter of course in her university years. Yet even after her Spark had been unshackled, her skill on the board were indifferent to those of Krosp and Master Payne. Krosp had said she had a knack for unusual gambits, but her grasp of the deep strategies were lacking. He had proved that by regularly trouncing her without even bothering to cheat. So she had not expected it to become a standing ritual when Brynden had asked her to teach him after observing the two players who were always battling each other at a nearby table.  
  
Brynden had proven a more than able student. His grasp of the game verged on the prodigal. Soon she had exhausted all the established gambits to stymie him. That was when the games had drawn her in. It took all her skill to stay afloat against his attacks. They were relentless and subtle. Most of the time she counted herself lucky to eke out a stalemate. It was stimulating to pit herself against another mind. There really wasn't anyone else. Osha she counted as a friend. Kylla was a boon minion. Tormund was amusing once you got past his bluster. It was Brynden who could make her sweat intellectually.  
  
It was easy to forget he was not entirely human. What she saw in the guise of a young man about Gil's age would have been a centennarian had he stayed mortal. Who knew what joining with the weirwood had done to him? This could be but a phantasm like the inhabitants of Montmartre--little more than drones acting out limited roles--acting as an interpreter for a weakly godlike intelligence that regarded her as an ant. Or, she conceded, as a pawn in a game. He had said his "watch" didn't concern the free folk. That could be a reference to the fabled Night's Watch who manned the Wall meant to keep out the Others. His merging with the weirwood hinted at so-called magics attributed to the mythical precursor "children of the forest".  
  
Wait.  
  
Huginn had just happened to distract her at a spot where she had found obsidian.  
  
The locals called it dragonglass. Dragons were fire incarnate where the Others were--  
  
"HA!" Agatha slapped her hand down on the table. "The ice-demons are vulnerable to obsidian like iron is said to be bane to faeries!"  
  
"You puzzled it out." Bryden granted her a rare smile. "I had thought a hint or two would be needed."  
  
"Someone's turned their intrigue valve to HIGH for too long," Agatha said, absently ordering her septon forward. "By the way, checkmate."  
  
"Eh?" Brynden narrowed his single good eye. "I never can predict you, my lady. It is most annoying at times."  
  
"Deal with it." Agatha smirked. "Cut out the gnomic pronouncements. What are their other weaknesses?"  
  
"All things to deal with flame. They come at night for they cannot bear the sun's blaze," Brynden said. With a twist, he released the blade hidden within his cane. "Obsidian is bane for it is the frozen fire of the great pyre that warms the earth. Valyrian steel is proof against them, for it is forged from fire and blood."  
  
"What an interesting piece of metallurgical engineering." Seizing his wrist, Agatha snatched the swordcane from him. "This is as light as the advanced titanium-steel alloys used in airship--"  
  
Suddenly, Agatha was aware of how tense every muscle in Brynden's wrist was.  
  
Then wings flapped wildly.  
  
Agatha was left in the sunlight of Montmartre, alone.  
  
++++  
  
Mistress was in a strange mood this morn.  
  
Well, Mistress was always a little strange. Her moods could shift from summer's warmth to a howling winter blizzard at times. Kylla hadn't born Mistress' wrath. Just being around her when the madness place roused her temper could send shivers through anybody near. It hadn't been nice at all watching Mistress rage after the big bag of wind had told her she couldn't live south. Then there had been the whispers in the night. Kylla had awoken to Mistress talking to the gods again in her sleep. Had to be the gods, for hadn't Mistress bound herself by blood-magic to the weirwoods? And wasn't she attended to by Huginn and Muninn, familiars granted by the gods to watch over her?  
  
That was everyday strangeness, though. What puzzled Kylla was Mistress' sadness waking up from her god-visions. If Kylla hadn't known better, she would have thought Mistress had had a fight with a beloved. She had seen that expression often enough in her cousins when they had had a spat with a suitor. Only Mistress didn't have a lover here. Perhaps she had had one in her homelands? She had gone quiet the time that Kylla had once had the courage to ask. Mistress' strangeness continued through the day. She had asked the bag of wind's sister to check the hot-springs for more dragonglass, for one. When Osha had come back with several more chunks, Mistress had spent half the day chipping out arrowheads and crude daggers.  
  
Well, Mistress was a little more normal now. She was working on her blunderbuss. Mistress had been working on it for a moon's turn. She had brewed up wondrous medicines far better than anything the woods-witches could spell together in a scattering of clay jars and a small iron pot. Maester Callorm couldn't have done better with the fine alchemist's glass he had in his chambers. Kylla enjoyed working with Mistress then. She had always loved watching Maester Callorm putter around brewing things. She could help Mistress with that part of her work. Mistress' potions could stop the worst mortification of a wound or ease pain in ways a southron lord would be amazed at. These savage folk thought her the most powerful witch they had ever met.  
  
In return, they traded her bronze and wood and little scraps of stuff from the outside world. Like the broken far-eyes that Mistress was planning to turn into something like the Myrish glass that Callorm had used to see small things big. There was also the pledge, of course. Anyone who accepted Mistress' care had to make the promise not to raid south. Many a wilding had sworn at her for that. Some had died for what they called their freedom. Others had sworn before a heart's tree when the sickness got worse. From those bits and pieces, Mistress had cobbled together her inventions. The blunderbuss was one: two bronze trumpets mounted side by side on a crossbow prod carved from ironwood.  
  
"Oversensitive men--" Mistress muttered, her mood turning foul. "They must be a separate, less-evolved species that masquerades as human."  
  
"I've readied the powder." Kylla handed Mistress the mixture of midden scrapings, sulfur from the hot springs, and charcoal. She had been very careful not to come close to flame.  
  
"Excellent." Mistress took a pinch between her fingers. "I'd rather have a good death ray at hand. But I suppose old-fashioned gunnery will do until we can find a smuggler to bring in better tools."  
  
"Mistress would find everything she needs south," Kylla said. "Don't believe Tormund. He's trying to keep you here."  
  
"He's not subtle about it." Mistress poured equal measures of powder into the trumpets. "The lecture Brynden gave me about political realities drove home that I had better have some leverage before visting the Seven Kingdoms.'  
  
Brynden? Her dream-lover was the _Bloodraven_?  
  
"Kylla, if you decide to stay as my minion, we might not be staying in Westeros," Mistress continued. "I am not saying I'll be settling here. But I may have to find somewhere I can establish my own territory."  
  
"I--" Kylla fingered her amber trilobite pin. "I go where you go, Mistress. I wish you'd stay in the North. The Starks are the noblest of the lords in the realms. Winterfell would open its gates for you."  
  
"We'll see." Mistress poured lead pellets into each trumpet. Then she rammed woolen wads atop them with a wooden pole. "There! Crude but functional piezolelectric ignition system. We have leaped from the Bronze Age to the Renaissance."  
  
"It's a weapon?"  
  
"Oh yes. Let's test fire it."  
  
+++  
  
The sound of thunder echoed about the forest.  
  
Stunned, the villagers stared at the grumkin. Then they stared at the ruins of the frozen goat carcass she had used as a target.  
  
Teeth flashed in a feral, satisfied grin.  
  
" _Marvelous."_


	10. Sensitivity Session

Well, best to think of this as a skin half-full of mead. Tormund had the best view of Agatha bathing that a man could ask for. Not a hint of southron softness remained. Pity she wouldn't let her teats out to air. Still, it was a glorious sight. It was also upside-down. Cunning wench, that Agatha. She had been taking well to Osha's lessons in woodcraft. He had spotted the snare set on the path to the watching place easily enough. But Agatha was a smart grumkin-lass indeed. He had stepped over the snare right onto a branch rigged to set off the other traps. There had been lots of them.  
  
Tormund shuddered when he heard the plaintive trumpeting from the mimmoth pit.  
  
Tormund's member twitched when Agatha rose up out of the hot-spring. He could see her from the back. No loss there! Har! Ow. Ow. He gritted his teeth when the cage of bone and antler around his nethers tightened. There were these nasty blunt spikes on the inside. Agatha wrapped a long piece of cloth around her. She slipped her feet into wood sandals with plaited bark straps. She slipped on her glasses before turning to him. She had spent near a week fiddling with those far-eyes lenses and other scraps of glass. The large circles of glass set in frames of horn put him in mind of an owl. Though she was better shaped than any owl he had seen.  
  
OW!  
  
"Was it worth it, Tormund?" Agatha asked, hands behind her back.  
  
"Every moment o' agony, my love," Tormund replied.  
  
"You're not in agony." Agatha held up a sentiel pine branch. "Agony is when I find places to stick this and use it like a ramrod."  
  
"Har, if you want for ramming--"  
  
"Like the urethra." Agatha shook the twig to emphasize how the needles still on it. "What you would call your 'pisshole'"  
  
"Er." Tormund swallowed nervously. "I--won't do this again?"  
  
"That's better.," Agatha said. "I was supposed to splutter and fume when I caught you peeping on me, right? Then you could have a big laugh when you told the story to your friends."  
  
"This makes a funnier tale," Tormund replied. "'Course, it'd be even grander if you tied me down and had your terrible way with me."  
  
"Dream on."  
  
"Every night." Tormund sighed. "You're a cruel, cruel woman."  
  
"Oh, I can be merciful." Agatha scooped up a handful of snow. "Here, let me help you bring down that swelling."  
  
"No, Agatha, wait, I'm sorry---AAAAAAAARRRGGHHHHHH!"  
  
"Next time, use the marked path," Agatha said. "Stay on the men's side unless invited over. Got it?"  
  
"Aye," Tormund gritted out through chattering teeth.  
  
" _Good._ "  
  
Half-full of mead. She had come this close to touching his member! A man could die happy after that. O' course, right now death would be a happy fate indeed. His pecker was none too pleased with the snow packing the prick-cage. Agatha patted his cheek almost tenderly before stepping behind him. It was high torture when he heard the cloth fall and her dressing behind him. Almost as much torture as the frostbite he was sure was eating away at his nethers. Her footsteps disappeared into the mist as she left him hanging upside down.  
  
She wasn't without a heart, his Agatha. She had stuck a dragonglass blade into the tree at head height. All he had to do was swing over and pluck the knife out with his teeth. Easy! There was the little problem that any movement of the web binding him like an ice-spider's prey tightened the cage. Tormund dwelled for a bit on the balance between pain and freedom. Hmmm. Agatha liked puzzles and sums-riddles. So... He shifted his bulk this way and that. Aye, that was the way of it! Swing in the right pattern and the cage didn't bite. It also meant he had scant seconds to grab the knife with his mouth. Well, what was life without a challenge?  
  
Hands as dark as the blade plucked it free from the tree.  
  
Tormund swayed as he stared as the shrouded man in the mottled blacks and greys of a crow. Beneath his robe was black ringmail speckled with rust. A hood and a scarf concealed his face. No, not a him. Not that, with those hands where all the blood had run down after he had died. Tormund closed his eyes. Some-and-forty years in these lands were not a bad stretch. Pity he wouldn't see summer. At least he wouldn't rise. The magic of those who walked the white wouldn't hold here where the fires of the earth bubbled up. Air hissed as the blade came down.  
  
"OOF!" Tormund tumbled free of the severed web. He scrambled to his feet, better to die on them.  
  
"Yours, Giantsbane," the crow said in a rattly voice. Black fingers offered the dragonglass blade hilt-first.  
  
"Not claiming me for your masters, are you?" Tormund said.  
  
"They are not my masters." Deep within the shadows of the cowl were two black eyes untouched by unholy blue fire. "My watch has not yet ended."  
  
"The mercy your kind give mine is a slit throat over slit ropes," Tormund said.  
  
"We share a foe as all men do," the crow rattled out. "You would die for her."  
  
"Wade through a thousand o' you if need be," Tormund said.  
  
"I bring her both a charge and a gift." The crow proffered a blade sheathed in half-rotted leather.  
  
"Can I find me breeches first?"  
  
"Best to hasten, Giantsbane. Winter is coming."  
  
"Not the first time I've had to run back with me cock hanging free." Tormund eyed the blade. It was curiously light for steel-- "Gods damn me. Is this what I think it is?"  
  
"Go." The crow swung up onto a great elk bearing tack and saddle. "For her watch has just begun."  
  
++++  
  
The old, weak her would have wailed "What can I do?" Now, the question was "what can't I do?" She had once felt proud she had cobbled together wonders while traveling the Wastelands with the Circus. How spoiled had she been! All around if one had the guts to disarm them were ruined sparky creations. She had Rivet's great store of scavenged tools to work with. Compared to her life here, it had been as if she had been mistress of her own fully-stocked lair with a horde of minions to boss around. Big deal. The free folk survived in this sub-arctic purgatory with little more than stone, wood, antlers, and a little bronze.  
  
She was a spark. Not only that, she was a strong Heterodyne spark. If Tormund's people could do it, she had no excuse to collapse like some ingenue in a bad melodrama faking the vapours. Need glass after you've run out of scraps? Grind quartz to dust with a millstone. Wire? Bore a hole in an ironwood plank as the basis for a wire-drawing mechanism. Carbon? Sift through the hearth for charcoal. Improvise. Innovate. Cheat. Most might declare this insanity. Good thing she was a madgirl, then. It might take days or weeks to build the tools to build the tools to produce what was common in any Europan lab. The frustrations made the triumph all the sweeter.  
  
The midimoth trumpeted within the treadmill linked to the primitive galvanic generator. The dwarf mammoth was the size of a small dog. Apparently a bull mimmoth had mated with a very surprised female member of a native herbivore similar to an oversized pika. There had been no convenient lodestone around for the stator. No problem, she had used a solenoid electromagnet of copper windings around iron cut out of a trade cookpot. A voltaic cell of copper disks and honey-vinegar energised it. The current ignited an electric candle whose light was focused by a succession of fused-quartz lenses. The collimated beam bounced off the sword clamped to a workbench into a precisely-cut prism whose light was cast on a hide screen.  
  
Whatever alloy this Valyrian steel was composed of was as related to the common sort as a human was to an amoeba. The spectroscopic patterns were unlike any material she had ever read about. Incredibly intense temperatures must have been involved in the blade's creation. The rippled patterns indicative of pattern welding in the smokey-grey metal were puzzling. It was a technique used when one had poor stock material to work with. Earlier tests with what tools and acids at hand on the tang had found Valyrian steel was at least as durable as the more exotic spark-formulated alloys.  
  
Then the dynamo exploded in a shower of sparks and smoke. White fog enveloped the incipent disaster as Kylla ripped over the seal of the horn nozzle of a leather sack full of carbon dioxide. Agatha absently penciled in the time to do another round of fermentation to recharge the fire extininguisher. That would have to be added to the rebuild time of the dynamo itself. She had gotten perhaps fifteen seconds of observation time. Better than she had expected, actually. Agatha filed away the readings she had garnered into memory while accepting a cup of herbal tea from her minion.  
  
"Great reflexes, Kylla," Agatha said, jerking a chain. The fumes were drawn out by a wooden fan attached to the windmill on the roof. "You're doing better than I ever did when I was Doctor Beetle's minon. Gotterdammerung, I was such a klutz."  
  
"Is SCIENCE! mostly explosions, Mistress?" Kylla patted the anxious midimoth.  
  
"The fun parts." Agatha saluted with her mug. "A really spectacular failure can tell you as much as a success. Which is good, considering what it was like before I broke through."  
  
"This must have told you much," Kylla said.  
  
"Pah, this is nothing compared to a real lab disaster," Agatha said. "Now, at TPU, there we had real disasters. One time I saw this escape in the Dangerous Constructs Lab. Viscera everywhere."  
  
The midimoth's trunk patted a now very nervous Kylla.  
  
"There's time to reconsider the lab minion position," Agatha said. "Your clerical work is as important to helping me puttering about the lab."  
  
"I swore to serve, Mistress," Kylla said. "It isn't near like being any lady's maid. At least it isn't boring."  
  
"That's the spirit!" Agatha grinned. "I've got all the data I can expect to get. Take some free time."  
  
"I'll tidy afore I go, Mistress," Kylla said.  
  
Agatha ignored Kylla's protests to help with the post-experimental recovery work. Many hands made light work. The clean-up took only half-an-hour. Kylla retired to the bed that she shared with Agatha. In spite of improved insulation, the chill of a deep winter beyond-the-wall still sucked the heat out of Ruddy Hall. Demoting Kylla to a trundle bed as was the custom of servants in Westeros would have been suicidal. It was also the reason that Agatha's buckskin labcoats were fur-lined. She still had to wrap several woolen blankets around her when she settlled down to the paperwork.  
  
Paper being nonexistent here, Kylla's reports for the day were rendered in wampum. Beads of stone and shell arranged a symbolic code served the free folk as a combination of letters of credit, treaties, and story-books. It took some work to adapt it to double-entry book-keeping and proper inventory control measures. It was critical given the trickle of free folk who came to the village in search of the healer. News had spread over the months since her arrival beyond-the-Wall. Some of it spread by trappers talking whenever they encountered each other on hunts or their traplines. Others clamied visions from the gods. Agatha had a suspicion a certain manipulative avian had been busy.  
  
Sadly, she glanced at the chess board set up nearby.  
  
Summer in Montmartre wasn't so much fun.  
  
Her lips pursed. Drat. The midimoths helped with the food situation. It might not be enough. The patients and their companions were a burden on the village whose food supply was razor-thin at the best of times. She might have to craft more crossbows if she was going to request another round of support from the other villages along the Antler River. Every arbalest that left her workshop was accompanied by a strict agreement to not raid south. But she dreaded that one of her weapons might be found on a raider going over the Wall. That would mean Taking Steps, along with Making An Example. Agatha glanced at the blunderbuss mounted above her bed. Well, that was the reason she had Ultima Regio.  
  
Agatha huddled under the blankets when the door briefly swung open. Usually Tormund stayed away when she warned him about an entropy-intensive bout of SCIENCE! she had planned. Agatha grimaced when she saw how much her lab had encroached on her host's space. His bed was now an enclave nearly cut off by the every-increasing workbenches and machines cluttering up Ruddy Hall. She...really should find her own place come spring. Tormund had taken her little lesson a few months ago with his usual good humour. Still, it stretched the limits of guest right to drive him out of his own hall.  
  
It wasn't Tormund. The taller figure of his son Toregg brushed the snow off his clothes and boots at the threshold. He must have stood guard tonight. He rubbed the arm broken when he had tried to shield his father from her wrath. Agatha bit her lip. He must have been freezing half-to-death out there. The ache she was responsible for definitely didn't help. Not that he complained. He rarely spoke much, though his deep voice made it known his thoughts when he did. Hesitantly, she lifted up the blankets bundled around her in invitation. She had offered it many times to Osha. It was as sacred as guest right beyond-the-Wall, offering body heat.  
  
"My thanks, magnara," Toregg said.  
  
"Why do you people keep calling me that?" Agatha returned to the wampum records. "I am not your chieftainess. This is volunteering in return for bread and board."  
  
"O' course, we know you're heading south," Toregg said, shifting in what was an entirely platonic way to better warm up. "After the summer. Or will it be the summer after that?"  
  
"Oh, you're definitely your dad's son." Agatha sighed as the shared warmth spread to her. "You, Tormund, your sister--all of you don't understand. This is temporary."  
  
"So you say, magnara," Toregg said. Strong hands slid up to her shoulders. "Don't break me other arm, if this angers you."  
  
"Oh." Agatha melted when his fingers dug in right there. "Yeah. Um. Yes. You're forgiven for your presumption."  
  
"Me wife liked it when I rubbed her so," Toregg said. "She was four-and-ten like me when I stole her. Lanna was special. I gave her a blue rose the day we met at trade-fair before I braved her tent."  
  
Was.  
  
Beyond-the-Wall, certain realities meant that Lanna's fate was...  
  
"I'm sorry," Agatha said. "Childbirth?"  
  
"Would have been a son," Toregg said.  
  
"Wish I could have saved them," Agatha said. Her eyes drooped.  
  
"Aye, magnara." Toregg said. "Never loved a woman until I saw you standing brave and proud before me father, ready to die to save us from your mother."  
  
Agatha's eyes snapped open very wide.  
  
"Good night, magnara," Toregg slipped away. "I'll bed down in the corner. Thank kindly for the wamth."  
  
Red fire.  
  
Why did everything have to be so _complicated_?

 

 


	11. Ascension

Bloodshot eyes stared at the copper plates scattered on the workbench.  
  
Um.  
  
What were these for?  
  
Agatha slapped first one cheek, then the other. The pain jostled something resembling coherent thought in her mind. The copper plates were etched with logical circuitry based on the latest electromechanical relay cognition engine designs. Clockwork computation was a mature technology. The tradition that stretched from the sparks of antiquity such as Menton to Van Rijn to Doctor Beetle's creations had existed for millenia. There were limits, such as the fragility of the intricate gearwork of the Muses. Electromechanics had been the big new thing when she had been at TPU. Instead of metal wire, laid into the copper logic boards were strands of living weirwood tissue. Thin roots at the corners resting in a nutrient bath beneath the copper plaque kept it alive.  
  
Weirwood trees could host minds. Her mother's theories about the ultimate unity of machine and organic intelligences--informed by Tarsus Beetle's own work--meant that weirwoods might host artificial intelligences. Some early experiments with weirwood cuttings trying to project coding into them by mental force had ended with some rather disturbing--if decorative--mutations in those early efforts. Pity she had had to burn the ones that had made a break for freedom. Um. Where was she? Yes. Her dissection of those cuttings had confirmed similarities between organic nervous tissue and the inner tissues of weirwoods. So it followed that such heartwood could be woven into neural networks.  
  
She studied what was supposed to be a vision-control circuit. What was inscribed onto the plate and the others was utter, useless gibberish. Sighing, she scourged the plates clean in the hearth before tossing them onto the scrap pile. Sending herself into spates of madgirl fugueing hadn't cured her. Neither had doing the rounds of her patients, frequent dips into the snowdrifts, or sparring with the spearwives of the village. Several of the latter had had to be put on the patient list after she had gotten too vigorous. Nothing lately had cured her of her mind's treachery when she finally fell asleep after staring at the ceiling for hours.  
  
That ever-so-brief kiss she had planted on Gil after surviving the wasps. Lars and herself in a passionate clinch as Bill and Lucrezia onstage. Brynden's one brief peck on the back of her hand. Those dreams where she was tied to the cylinders of a steam engine whose pistons were surging and thrusting. Nothing new there, she had had those off and on since she was fifteen. All that she could handle. What made her long for a cranial drill and a syringe of lye were the tea-cozy-and-spoon dreams of her Lucrezia and Klaus Wulfenbach. Particularly the one of their final union right before she had drugged the poor man. No wonder the Baron hated her mother so!   
  
The burst of cold air from the doorway was a welcome distraction. Especially since it wasn't Toregg. It was Osha with a successful day's worth of catch from the trapline slung over her shoulder. Great. She needed the distraction. Agatha cleared the medical slab to help her friend with the skinning. That would be good, honest work that she couldn't bungle in her current state. No naughty thoughts like how she missed Lars' touch and Toregg's hands had been really nice and--and-- Agatha banged her head against the slab. Hopeless. One good backrub and a few words had knocked her gyroscope off kilter. She must be the laughingstock of the village.  
  
"You wouldn't happen to know if _theobrama cacao_ exists somewhere?" Agatha asked. "I have the urge to sit in front of a fire with a couple of kilos of fudge."  
  
"You're in a spirit summer for sure," Osha teased.  
  
"It's not as if I'm in love at first sight with him," Agatha said. "I don't even know anything about him."  
  
"You've seen him at the springs," Osha said.  
  
"Yes." Agatha swallowed. "Great musculature. Classical Greek proportions. Would you stop doing that? He's your own nephew."   
  
"Southron wooing's strange," Osha said. "He wants you. You're a woman grown, strong and free. Free folk don't think o' babes as trueborn or bastard. Every one born and lives past two is a spit in the eye o' the darkness and cold."  
  
"You must be chatting with Brynden," Agatha said. "'Love isn't politics'. I have a duty to continue my line. Big deal. It's not as if you free folk would actually proclaim me queen or anything. Tormund's your leader."  
  
Osha set a sack on the slab.  
  
Agatha opened it.  
  
Out poured dozens of bronze torcs encrusted with runes, a lump of gold, and a circlet carved from wood.  
  
In the center of the circlet was her house's sigil and runes in the Old Tongue.  
  
"'Magnara To Het Rok Din'", Osha translated. "Only seemed fitting a grumkin forge her own crown. Every village along the Antler gave bronze, from those handed down from father to son. The gold's from one o' Tormunds armbands."  
  
"I never asked for this," Agatha whispered.  
  
"We're not kneelers," Osha said. "We follow strength. We follow the man. We _choose._ Oh, Agatha, they call us thieves. You're the greatest o' them, for you stole our hearts just being you."  
  
Agatha stared at the meager collection of treasures for a long time. It was composed of one of the few legacies these clans and tribes had. Swallowing heavily, she set the sack down by her forge. Osha has retreated to one corner to skin her catch. Air. She needed air. Agatha shrugged into a sheepskin coat before diving out into the snows outside. Her glasses misted up for a moment. Wiping them clean, she looked around the village which was--  
  
\--home.  
  
She had been so damned blind. Everywhere she looked, pinned on the breasts and collars of the villagers and seekers of healing alike were trilobite badges. None were gold. Only a few were bronze or amber. Most were pine, the best they could do. Heterodyne sigils were everywhere in Europa. She could tell herself there that is was nothing to do with her. The trilobites were worn in honour of the Heterodyne Boys. Yet this was not Europa. _She_ was the Heterodyne.  
  
Kneeling before the heart tree was a tall man with russet hair escaping the edge of his hood.  
  
Right.  
  
Enough wittering.  
  
"Hey," Agatha said.  
  
"Magnara," Toregg said.  
  
"Again, I never asked for the title," Agatha said.  
  
"Might be the best reason for you to have it," Toregg said.  
  
"I'm not that good at his," Agatha said. "I can't promise you anything."  
  
"Aye, that's honest enough," Toregg said.  
  
"But--what kind of scientist would I be if I refused an experiment?"   
  
Toregg smiled.  
  
+++++  
  
_Darkness was all around. Yet there was, within it, a brilliant island of light cast by bonfires around a white tree with red leaves. An oddly familiar face was carved into its trunk. Men and women in skins and furs stood solemnly with torches in their hands as she approached. A woman of fire, with a sword on her hip with a pommel even more familiar. The woman bowed her head before a brute who bore a circlet of bronze with a strange set of arms cast in gold in the middle of her brow._  
  
_"Magnara Het Rok Din!"_  
  
_"Magnara Het Rok Din"_  
  
_" **HETERODYNE!**_ "  
  
_Looming up over them all was a dragon._  
  
_" **REJOICE!**_ " _it roared, scattering gold all around._  
  
Violet eyes snapped open.  
  
"She woke the dragon."  
  
Mad giggling filled the room.  
  
"SHE WOKE THE DRAGON!"

 

 


	12. King's Landing Weather Forecast: Fecal Precipitation 100%

Gods be good, had the king's sanity been returned to him?  
  
Standing guard by the foot of the Iron Throne, Ser Barristan Selmy berated himself for that worm of treachery within him. Those who wore the white cloak of the Kingsguard pledged never to judge their sovereign. Yet since Duskendale he had oft wondered if the Lord Hand should have refused his plea to rescue his grace. The king had become ever more cruel and whimsical over the years. Petty cruelties had become common affairs. There had been the unfortunate matter with Ser Ilyn Payne. Although, the tearing out of his tongue was just in its way. He had spoken close to treason. But it had been after Ser Barristan had borne his grace from the dungeons of the Dun Fort that pettiness had curdled to viciousness.  
  
That-- Barristan shied away from the word "madness". The shadow cast by his grace's suffering three years ago had finally lifted. Or so it was to be hoped. The lightening in his grace's mood had come a moon's turn ago. He had burst out of his rooms scattering gold about the Red Keep while exhorting all he met to rejoice. For what, no-one could say. Few could plumb the mysteries of his grace's humours. Since then he had proven almost serene in his moods. Yes, his eccentricities still remained. His fears of sharp edges in anything other than a Kingsguard's hands meant that Barristan and his brother were his bath-attendants and barbers. At least now he had a presentable appearance.  
  
The travails of the Defiance had left their mark upon the king. His features were still gaunt from starving himself for fear of poison. Beneath the robes of black and red were the countless scars given to him by the Iron Throne. There was still something of the promising young prince that Ser Barristan had known in the dawn of his reign. The claws of uncut nails were gone . His hair was cut in a rough style of knights who had learned as squires to groom their mentors for the battlefield. It was better than the unwashed tangle it had been. He even lounged upon the mass of barbed steel with confidence. His many-flamed crown was tilted rakishly upon his brow.  
  
His grace had called for all to attend him in the Great Hall of the Red Keep. Many of the great and good of the realm were here for the wedding three moon's turns from now. Prince Rhaegar and his betrothed Elia Martell stood together arm in arm. Ser Barristan respected her. Not a beauty like her handmaiden--he caught himself from lingering on dark hair and violet eyes--she had a quiet dignity that suited the oft-solemn prince. The small council stood at attention at the table at the foot of the throne. The Lord Hand stood with his usual stoic coldness at the chair by its head. A hard man to read, there was still just the hint of approval in his gold-flecked green eyes as he glanced up at the king.  
  
"All hail the Aerys, the second of his name," came the cry, "king of the Andals, the--"  
  
"Yes, yes, I am sure they have heard it all before," his grace said with a slight giggle. "We all know who truly reigns in the Seven Kingdoms. Don't we, Tywin?"  
  
"That has never been in dispute, your grace," the Hand said.   
  
"I know the realm will be safe in your hands," the king continued, "I shall be making a progress to the North, to inspect that most neglected corners of my realm. How fortunate that we have so many of my leal vassals here to accompany me to Winterfell, where I shall hold court.'  
  
"Your grace," the prince said, "surely you mean after the wedding."  
  
"Oh, that. Canceled. The betrothal is annulled." The king flicked his fingers dismissively at Elia. "We have no time for such trivialities. Besides, I will not have so beloved a son wed into a family of oathbreakers."  
  
"Oh, such a scandal," came the titter from the Master of Whisperers. "Ser Lewyn was discovered abed with his paramour last evening."  
  
"Yet I am a merciful king, am I not?" His grace smirked. "My oldest friend, my most leal servant, had been lonely and without a wife for so long. I grant her hand as his. You will wed him, won't you, Elia? To rub out the stain of your uncle's sin. Else it might have to be purged with fire."  
  
The king winked broadly at the stone-faced Lord of Casterly Rock.  
  
"Why, the septon is waiting in the royal sept as we speak," his grace said. "As for my eldest son's bride, we might consider a maiden more suitable. After my son has returned from his embassy to Pentos."  
  
Screams of outrage came from the Dornish retinue. Ser Barristan put aside his private grief for his brother's fate as he prepared to shield the king from their wrath. Yet the king appeared to have, for once, prepared better to deal with the consequences of his whims. Guards in the livery of the Red Keep's guards bearing halberds and crossbows formed a double line before the throne. Flanking the Dornish princess' retinue were men of the Reach and Stormlands. Blades were bared to hold them in place. Knights bearing the arms of Crownsland houses approached the once-betrothed couple.  
  
The silver-haired prince's features were full of sorrow as he stepped away from Elia Martell. Ser Barristan cut off the unworthy thought that there had been just the tiniest flicker of relief right before she had turned to beseech him. Later, Ser Barristan would say that he had never seen a woman comport herself with more dignity. Elia Martell came of her own accord to Lord Tywin Lannister's side without the prodding of spears to encourage her. There was a sad smile upon her lips as she proferred her arm. The Lord Hand's complexion was near as dark as hers. Yet he still took linked her arms with his.  
  
Ser Barristan did not see the ceremony take place a few minutes later. It seemed the king had little interest in attending. The Kingsguard stayed by his grace's side as he slipped out through the door behind the Iron Throne. He said nothing while they climbed the serpentine stairs to Maegor's Holdfast. His brother Ser Oswell Whent had the duty of guarding the bridge over the dry moat lined with spikes. His brother shared a private, sardonic look with Ser Barristan out of the king's sight when they passed. Ser Oswell had a dark sense of humour. He would have heard the storm from the Great Hall--the outcry would have been heard in Rosby--to tell the tale of yet another of the king's actions brewing up chaos.  
  
He is my liege, Ser Barristan said over and over.  
  
It is not my place to judge.  
  
Ser Barristan tasted from the cask of Arbor Gold waiting in his grace's chambers. He doubted very much that any Dornish wine would be coming to King's Landing for a very long time to come. His grace chortled with glee as he flung his crown onto a torch-sconce. The cruelty that was all too much of a part of him was bared naked in the privacy of his rooms. The king sat by a table with a small chest upon it. Casually, he flipped it open. Nestled within its silk-and-velvet lining was an egg of stone. It was a brillaint blue with swirls of white the shade of lightning. Ser Barristan had seen several such eggs. His grace was obsessed with hatching them. They still never failed to be marvels no matter how often he saw them.  
  
"Neatly done, mmm, my faithful ser?" The king caressed the egg with a care he had not shown his wife for a long time. "Varys gave me good counsel. Yet the plot was one of my own devising."  
  
"I have never seen the like," Ser Barristan said.  
  
"His face! So angry and yet so hopeful." The king raised his goblet in mock salute. "Tywin the Cunning. Really. So easily led. All I had to do was hint that his slut of a daughter could be Rhaegar's whore. I daresay he would have bedded that flat-chested Dornish drab right there if I had so commanded."  
  
"Your grace, I must confess--"  
  
"Yes, you knew of Lewyn's folly." The king smiled at Ser Barristan. "Ser, you who saved me, have nothing to fear. As for Lewyn, why he will meet us north upon the Wall when I go to inspect it. I do have mercy."  
  
"You have shown more than I have ever seen from you."  
  
"Mmmmm." The king sighed happily. "You know, when I find her and she hatches this, the first thing I will do when my mount matures is have Cersei and every other Lannister fed to it. I shall have Tywin watch. Cutting off his eyelids if need be."  
  
They called Ser Barristan bold for his charge against Maelys in the war.  
  
He reckoned he earned that tilted far more within this room, staying silent in his plate.  
  
"Rejoice, ser," the king said, cupping the egg in both hands. "For soon dragons shall fly again. And then everyone who mocks me shall...burn."   
  
+++++  
  
"It is a lovely estate on the hills within sight of the Rock," Kevan Lannister said. "My father oft brought my mother there to escape the heat of summer."  
  
"Summer in the west would be autumn in Dorne," Elia Martell said. "It does seem so airy and bright compared to my lord husband's seat."  
  
"It is said that only a Lannister might love Casterly Rock," Kevan said. "There will be no expense spared in improvements. All the wealth of the Rock and the riches of Lannisport will be at your disposal. Even glass gardens, should you wish to have a taste of home."  
  
"My husband is considerate," Elia said. "He was gentle with me."  
  
"My brother is not like certain men," Kevan said. "He has been hard on women, true. Yet no harder than those women deserved."  
  
"Of course making me mistress of my own estate is no slight," Elia said. "There could be only one Lady of Casterly Rock while my lord husband rules."  
  
"Joanna was the sun to him," Kevan said. "You are still his wife. You will be accorded all the honours and courtesies due to your station."  
  
"Not his love." Elia smiled sadly. "Peace, ser. I am a woman of Dorne. We know well the deserts. We also know of how to make the dry sands bloom."  
  
Kevan Lannister prayed to the Maiden that this dignified young woman could perform such a miracle. Elia Martell was nothing like his late cousin Joanna. Joanna had indeed been the sun about which Tywin spun about. This princess of Dorne could be only the moon whose beauty was a reflection of her husband's glory. For all that, the Mad King's backhanded gift might be the salvation of his brother. For too long after Joanna's passing, Tywin had sunk into himself without recourse to the balm with which she had softened him. Tywin would never grant another woman such love. Yet at least Elia granted Tywin respect and understanding.  
  
Kevan left Elia in her chambers within the Tower of the Hand. Soon she would be leaving with the westerland's contingent to be presented to Tywin's bannermen before taking up temporary residence at the Rock. The king had not commanded Tywin for men to accompany him north. Kevan slipped into a garderobe to change before he went to see his brother. Off came the red-and-gold of a Lannister. On went the anonymous wool and leather of a hedge knight or man-at-arms calling at the Hand hoping to be hired on. Kevan took care to obscure his tell-tale golden hair beneath the cowl of his winter cloak.  
  
No-one took obvious notice as he slipped out the postern into Shadowblack Lane. Still, this was King's Landing. Worse, it was King's Landing with the Spider in residence. Kevan wandered about the city for an hour, through stews and alleys, to throw off any who might be following him. He was no master of whisperers, true. He had still learned certain skills that any man who served in the shadow of Tywin Lannister needed. He circled about the stable on the lower slopes of Rhaenys' Hill three times, like a hound about its bed, before lifting up the trap-door concealed in one stall.  
  
Tywin was a man. He had a man's needs. Unlike their father, Tywin had a sense of propriety about such desires. As ever it had been Kevan who had arranged matters. He had done the same at Tarbeck Hall in the matter of Rohanne's young son. The well had been filled and concealed beneath the rubble at Kevan's order. So when Tywin had alluded to certain matters, it had been Kevan he had trusted to fund the establishment of a certain brothel with an anonymous loan. The tunnel had been dug with westerlands miners convicted of stealing from the Rock's mines on promise of commutation of their sentences. Kevan passed without comment the spot where the spur they had been ordered to dig had been arranged to collapse. The drugged beer given them beforehand had ensured there had been no outcry.  
  
Kevan climbed the ladder to the hidden entrance within the back of the wardrobe. He knocked with the pre-arranged signal. Tywin opened the secret door clad in breeches and undone doublet. A lamp burned low on a table. It lit the gold-and-red diamond panes of the turret room with a soft light. Kevan did not deign to notice the girl sprawled upon the bed. Doubtless she had been exhausted by sating the urges his brother would never visit upon his wife. She would awake with many a bruise. Well, that was what whores were for. Chattaya was paid well for such matters. The whore would certainly be better off than had she been the queen asked to satisfy Aerys.   
  
"This is the only thing I will miss about this cesspit of a city," Tywin said.  
  
"You mean to resign?" Kevan asked.  
  
"There will no doubt be an incident some moon turns from now," Tywin said. "Reavers plaguing our shores again."  
  
"I will send a raven to Quellon," Kevan said. "You do not trust him to grant Rhaegar's hand to Cersei."  
  
"He thinks himself clever, to dangle scraps before me." Gold-flecked green eyes shone in the near-darkness. "After publicly breaking a betrothal and shaming the sister of Doran Martell? Sending the prince to where the Spider spun his webs, with only Ser Harlan as his guard? A hint of a promise means nothing."  
  
"I am sorry, brother," Kevan said. "All your work undone."  
  
"The realm is a step away from burning down around us." Tywin stared at the soft form on the bed. "Dorne will be the first. It will not be the last, not with Aerys' perifidy for all the Great Houses to see."  
  
"Jaime to the Tully girl?" Kevan asked, rhetorically.  
  
"Within the year if possible," Tywin said. "Damn him. He was my friend. We had such hopes."  
  
"He will be the Stark's burden now," Kevan said.  
  
"There is that." Tywin reached for a shapely ankle. "If you would excuse me."  
  
"Of course, brother."  
  
Kevan slipped back into the hidden shaft.  
  
From the half-open panel in the wardrobe above he heard a gasp, a sob, and then a snarl.  
  
Yes.  
  
Elia Martell had nothing to fear now.


	13. Packing For The Trip

There was not a soul in the tavern who did not love their prince that eve. Rhaegar had come to them in the guise of a bard rather than one of royal blood. In simple breeches and doublet, he silenced all with the music coaxed from a harp with strings as silver as his hair. Merchant and knight, highborn and low--all wept without shame to his laments and smiled at the bawdy songs. Any hint that he would end his playing was forestalling by cups being smashed upon the tables.  
  
Barristan slipped among them dressed in the boiled leather and wool of a hedge knight rather than the stainless white of a Kingsguard. To accost the prince now in the latter would mean riot. It was not the smallfolk he feared. The goldcloaks waiting around the corner under Ser Alliser Thorne's command could disperse them with cudgel and pike-butt. It was the lordlngs scattered among the crowd which promised trouble. Jon Connington worried him the most. The fiery-haired lordling was seated as close the prince as he could. It was not his skill with the sword Barristan feared. It was his prickly temper--especially where Rhaegar was concerned--that might rouse all to bloodshed.  
  
Barristan tipped the serving wench with a silver stag after she brought him his horn of ale. He tipped her another to bring the scrap of parchment to the prince. Even if she had her letters, no common-born woman could read a message in High Valyrian. Barristan nursed his ale until he heard the disappointed cries of Rhaegar's audience. The prince walked through the tavern with the grace of one who was at home upon the battlefield as the dancing floor. Rhaegar flung himself seemingly by chance onto the bench across from him. He idly strummed his harp. The prince's violet eyes were those of a man twice his years when he finally turned to face Barristan.  
  
"So mine father wishes to ship me out in the dead of night." The prince smiled at that as if at a grand jape. "I will come peaceably, my dear bold ser. I assume the galley awaits me at the docks."  
  
"His grace fears an attempt on your life if you leave upon the morrow," Barristan said, the lie in that sour on his tongue.  
  
"He has ever been jealous of me," Rhaegar said. He idly played a tune of the east on the strings. "It may surprise you, ser, to know I hold no hatred of my father. The crown is a terrible burden. Prophecy, even more so."  
  
"You know?" Barristan asked, mindful of his voices of silence of his charge's privacy.  
  
"The dragon dreams have haunted us since Daenys," Rhaegar said. "Other signs and portents have visited our lands this past year. The revival of the weirwoods of Raventree Hall and upon High Heart point north, do you not think?"  
  
"I am but a simple knight, my prince," Barristan said. "My world is shield and sword, not mysteries best left to maesters and sorcerors."  
  
"Simple is not stupid." Rhaegar squeezed Barristan's shoulder. "And my father will need your blade and shield upon his quest. I wish you both good fortune."  
  
"My prince, be safe," Barristan pleaded. "For the realm."  
  
"Prophecy entangles me as much as my father," Rhaegar said. "It may be that sailing east will be its fulfillment. After all, dragons may hatch. Yet there must needs be riders for such mounts."  
  
Rhaegar smiled enigmatically as he stroked the pillar of his harp. The three-headed dragon of his house twined up the wood. Barristan pondered this as Rhaegar announced one last song before the evening was done. Prophecy and dreams of dragons were a temptation to the Targaryens. Rhaegar's great-grandsire Aegon had immolated himself and almost all of his house at Summerhall seeking to bring dragons back into the world. It had only been Ser Duncan the Tall's heroism in bringing Rhaella and Rhaegar from the blaze that had saved the heir. The first king that Barristan had served under the white cloak had listened to the counsel of wood-witches. Aerys himself had become obsessed with dragons. This fancy of his to go north was only the latest of them. Now Rhaegar was heeding musty words in old scrolls.  
  
A prince of the blood of dragons should not be ushered out of his own capitol as if he were a wench tossed out of a lord's bedroom clutching a fistful of coppers. Rhaegar should ridden from the gates of the Red Keep to the cries of his admirers. He was the promised prince. He was all that a knight and lord should be. Barristan had sworn his oaths. He had a duty to obey. He escorted his charge out the rear of the tavern into the noisome alley where Ser Alliser's guard of not much honour waited. A melancholy descended upon the prince on the procession to the docks. Barristan doubted not that the prince knew this was an exile under another name. He was being sent to foreign shores with the eldest of the Kingsguard as his shield. Barristan respected Ser Harold Grandison as a loyal and true knight. He would be of little use as a guard for all that.  
  
A boat awaited the prince at the docks beyond the River Gate. Barristan saluted the prince with his blade when the rowers pushed off for the galley anchored in mid-stream. It bore the sails and banner of the Pentoshi magister who had volunteered to host the so-called embassy. Some cheesemonger whose name escaped Barristan at the moment. The plaintive melody of the prince's harp drifted over the swift-running waters of the Blackwater Rush. Barristan stayed at his post until the galley dipped oars. Two swift warships of the royal fleet under captains loyal to the king fell into formation with it as they disappeared into the darkness of the bay beyond. There would be no landings on Dragonstone, Barristan suspected. He allowed himself one moment of weakness. His shoulders sagged beneath the roughspun cloak at the loss to the realm.  
  
Barristan was about to turn back to the River Gate when the sloop drifted past. It was a small ship that was common among the fishermen and coastal traders of Blackwater Bay. Moonlight filtering through a break in the clouds overhead. Hair as red as the beacon on Massey's Hook shone in the moonbeam. In that moment, Barristan thought he recognized Myles Mooton and Richard Lonmouth, almost as close to the prince as Connington. At the tiller was a brother of the white who had often told him tales of setting sail from Starfall into the waters of the Summer Sea. Ser Arthur Dayne nodded in silent farewell.  
  
Barristan watched somberly as they sailed east.  
  
++++  
  
The peace of the godswood was marred only the faint shrieking coming from the White Sword Tower as the king vented his anger at Ser Arthur Dayne's defection. The high walls about the godswood reduced Aerys' screams to sounds little louder than the calls from the winter birds among the elms and adders. Kevan stood beside his brother at the edge of the clearing about the heart tree. Beneath her bare branches of the oak wreathed in smokeberry vines was Elia Martell in intense if muted conversation with her brother.  
  
Years in exile had hardened the impetuous boy that had arrived with the Princess of Dorne. Tywin had been rather more harsh in his assessment of the princeling: "a japing brat and a pervert who no doubt hopes to run riot through the maids and virgin boys of my household". The Dornish prince's hopes for slaking his lusts at Casterly Rock had been disappointed. Grief for the late Joanna had made even the most libidinous adopt chastity, as well as terror of what Tywin might do to any who caused dishonor during his mourning. The smirking youth was now a fit man grown wearing the fashions of the east with a sellsword's jewelery about him. His dark eyes were as sharp as the viper he had been named after.  
  
With a dramatic swirl of his cloak, Oberyn stalked towards them with predatory intent. Kevan flicked his eyes to the men the prince had brought back with him. They were Dornish and Rhoynar who he had formed into a sellsword company after he had parted from the Second Sons. All were well-armored in supple mail beneath sandsilk. In their hands with the famed spears and round steel shields of Dornish light horse. The copper serpent across a golden sun that was the badge of the Viper's Fangs were pinned at each throat. Tywin ignored them as if they were insects. He met Oberyn's glare with quiet indifference.  
  
"How you must be rejoicing, my lord of Lannister." Oberyn stared at them past a nose sharp as a water dancer's blade. "Does a smile touch those dour lips of yours, to imagine my mother's weeping that mine sister is in your bed?"  
  
"I did not ask for this match, goodbrother." At that, there was just the slightest flicker at the corner of Tywin's mouth. "As for your late mother, she should be the one rejoicing. Her daughter is married to a Lannister as she intended."  
  
"Sister, let me make you a widow." Oberyn's hand rested on the hlt of his sword.  
  
"No, brother," Elia said. "He has been as kind as he can be."  
  
"He intends to keep you in some little holdfast as if you were his paramour," Oberyn spat. "He denies you the honour of reigning as Lady of his oubliette of a rock."  
  
"I think it is very romantic," Elia replied. "There's spice in being the one who such a lord might ride as his hidden love."  
  
"Romance from him?" Oberyn raised one thin eyebrow. "The king's madness has infected you. His sole love for you is the fifty thousand spears which would be raised for your honour."  
  
"I do not hurt my wives," Tywin said. "I am not an animal, like some."  
  
"If I hear a hint you have mistreated her," Oberyn hissed. "The slightest sign you have shamed her, will be your death warrant. Then you shall feel the bite of the viper!"  
  
"Rather like the time we held down Emmon Frey before the wedding," Kevan said. "Those were almost the same words you said to him."  
  
"Nothing so overly dramatic," Tywin said. "I merely held the dagger to the root of his manhood and let him come to his own conclusions about touching my sister without her leave."  
  
Birds chirped. A squirrel chittered.  
  
"Well. Then we understand one another." Oberyn sniffed. "Mayhap on the ride to the Rock we can discuss matters. My brother Doran has need of a cupbearer. He would welcome your youngest."  
  
"The Water Gardens are a lovely place for a young boy," Elia said. "And there is much that one might read in letters home, in between the lines."  
  
"I will decide the disposition of the creature as I see fit," Tywin said. "I must leave. I have granted you as much time as I can allow, goodbrother."  
  
Elia took her husband's arm. The two walked away down the path to the godswood's gates as if they had been married for decades instead of a moon's turn. Oberyn cocked his head silently at Kevan. Kevan nodded back. Yes. They would have much to talk about on the ride to the westerlands. They might take the river road rather than the goldroad. There was the betrothal to offer to Hoster Tully. Even with Grandmaester Pycelle's assurances, Tywin did not trust ravens to avoid spiderwebs with such an important offer. The choice of road could be put down to the Dornish misliking traveling along the northern marches of the Reach.  
  
The Red Keep was bustling with the preparations of the host gathering for the king's progress to the North. Two thousand foot and five hundred horse had been levied from the retinues of lords who had come for a wedding. Aerys did not intend to be caught as he had been at Duskendale. The host would travel up the kingsroad while another thousand men sworn to Dragonstone and the Blackwater Bay houses set sail aboard a portion of the royal fleet to White Harbour. Rikard Stark would find that his one port to the outside world would be hostage while the king was in residence at Winterfell. Of course, it fell upon his brother to organize the entire follow on top of managing the realm.  
  
No matter.  
  
Let Aerys commit his mad schemes.  
  
For Lannisters paid their debts in coin appropriate to the occasion.  
  
And for his grace, it would be in fire and blood


	14. Making...Friends?

Cotter Pyke hated slavers. Taking thralls and salt wives was one thing. He had taken his share of both in a life of reaving across the seas until burying his axe in the wrong neck in a Gulltown tavern. A man who paid the iron price had the balls to take what was his by right of the Drowned God. The children of thralls and salt wives were freeborn if given to the drowned men to bless with salt and stone and steel. It was the way of the ironborn. His mother's mother had been a salt wife to the tavern where his serving wench of a mother had spat him out atop the bar.  
  
Slavers were another matter. They sold flesh as if it were livestock. Slavery was a mockery of the Old Ways. Cotter had always felt righteous when taking a screaming slavegirl to wife whenever taking a ship in the Stepstones. Saving them from the collar was an honorable act. So as First Captain of the Eastwatch Fleet, Cotter pursued any slavers hunting in the lands beyond-the-Wall with the zeal he did to any smugglers trading arms to the wildings. Slavers and smugglers were often enough the same coin anyway, getting some outlaw wildings to raid for maids and children in exchange for steel. The Tyroshi were the worst of the lot. They would sail far for human flesh.  
  
It turned out someone hated slavers even more than him.  
  
The pyre could be seen from leagues away. The stench rising from the massive bonfire was the reek of shit, sweat, and misery that permeated every slaver ship. Not all the wood from the Tyroshi cog had gone into the blaze. A godswood of spars had been planted above the tide-line of the pebbled beach. Atop each stake was a man with the forked, dyed beards of Tyrosh enduring the ultimate buggery. Some of the codemned were still wriggling like frogs on a crannogman's trident.  
  
A horde of wildings were gathered on the shore facing Cotter's fleet of six longships. The savages had been dancing about the fire to the skinpipes. Whoever commanded them hadn't been stupid. A picket line of the slim boats of hide-over-timber had raised the alarm at the Eastwatch fleet's approach. Usually, the wildings would scatter without any discipline. These were different. Maids and children who had been the slavers' prey were in the center of a square of men and women bearing round ironwood shields and spears. In front of the shield-wall square were wildings with nocked crossbows. No doubt those had been looted from the slaver ship.  
  
A short wilding built like a beer cask stood at the center of the side of the square facing Cotter. At his silent signal, Cotter ordered the men at the oars to land. He had drilled the men under his command mercilessly in the ironborn way. Five men had already leapt ashore with steel bared and shields ready just as the longship settled onto the strand. The keel barely scraped on the shingle. At the head of ten men, Cotter approached the wilding chief with his hand raised in a sign of peace. Cotter spied on one of the crossbows to see their make. Must be a new Myrish design--the bow was a recurve with some sort of odd pulley arrangement holding the string.  
  
"Evening, crow," the wilding said. "Came to warm a cold arse at our fire?"  
  
"That's captain to you," Cotter said. "I came to reap some slavers' heads. Seems you got to them before I did."  
  
"We've a couple left alive." The chief pointed with his spear at two naked Tyroshi. The blood soaking their loincloths told of geldings. "Take them south and put 'em on a ship back to tell a tale to their kind about what happens to slavers who come to the lands of the Heterodyne."  
  
"That your clan name?" Cotter asked.  
  
"Har! I'm Tormund Giantsbane, of Ruddy Hall." Tormund paused. "Suppose I should call it Heterodyne Hall now. She likes stretching out, she does."  
  
"So you're ruled by a woman." Cotter Pyke couldn't keep the contempt from his voice.  
  
"The Magnara Het Rok Din, aye." Tormund grinned. "She's been wanting a chat with one o' you black-robes. You'll do as good as any other."  
  
Tormund held out a skin of mead and a pouch of the fat-and-meat that served the wildings here as rations. Cotter took a ceremonial swig and pinch of meat. His men sheathed their blades at that. Say what you would about them, the wildings honored guest right even more strictly than those in the realms of men. Although a wilding granting a man of the Watch meat and mead was unheard of. Cotter uneasily noted the discipline which these wildings had as Tormund lead them into the haunted forest. The savages beyond-the-Wall could be fierce fighters the equal of any ironborn. But by and large they were a rabble better at ambush and raiding than open battle. Tormund's men marched as well as a lord's retinue.  
  
Cotter might have been a tavern wench's bastard. He had been raised in Lordsport where the best smiths in Westeros worked. He knew good steel. The spear-points were steel rather than the bronze of most good wilding arms. Newly-forged, too. How many chains and fetters were on a slaver's ship? The Tyroshi cog also hadn't just been set ablaze. It had been torn apart. That took days--perhaps even a fortnight--of work that could have been saved with some barrels of pitch and a torch. The wildings had been after the iron nails holding the ship together. They had flensed it like Ibbense at a whale carcass.  
  
Storm God take him, who were these people?  
  
Chanting came from the depths of the forest. A fire had been kindled before a weirwood. Cotter never could understand how you could worship a tree. Typical greenlander foolishness. Even he winced at the condition of the man kneeling in the center of spear-bearing men. The tatters of his rich clothing meant he had been the slaver ship's captain. He had been given to the women to deal with. New recruits to the Watch were told tales of what some wilding tribeswomen did to captives. It looked as if the slaver had suffered all of those and more.  
  
A steel blade touched the Tyroshi's neck.  
  
" _The one who passes sentence swings the sword. Do you have any last words, you merchant of misery and rape?_ "  
  
Every hair on the back of Cotter's neck rose.  
  
The sword had a certain smoky look to it. By the Drowned One, where had she found it? There was only one Valyrian steel blade beyond the Wall.  
  
" _Mercy_?" the figure snarled. " ** _You ask mercy after coming to these lands, trying to enslave my people? Here is the only mercy you will find!_** "  
  
A head bounced on the ground. The blood jetting from the stump splattered onto the weirwood. The figure with a voice like the Storm God roaring for souls wiped Dark Sister clean with a rag. She wore supple mail that had to be work from the east beneath a leather coat that reached her knees. Sheathing the blade, she strode over to him. This wasn't no upjumped spearwife playing at clan chief. This was a lady as highborn as any of the greenlands. It was as if Tywin Lannister had grown teats.  
  
Cotter Pyke had never bent the knee to anyone. Not poxy greenlanders, not the iron lords of his homeland, not anyone. Yet he felt himself going down just the same. This wasn't a lady. This was a _queen_ of the wilding lands that new recruits with the salt not yet under the foreskins whispered about. Cotter was half-down when a strong hand seized his shoulder. The wilding woman with the Lannister look drew him up to stand straight and proud.  
  
"Herr Captain," she said, with an accent he couldn't place, "we don't kneel in the Dynelands."  
  
"But you'd better learn to cower, crow," Tormund muttered with an evil smile.  
  
++++  
  
Ugh. They really needed a decent glassworks. The old Transylvanian stand-by for justice since the days of Vlad "Get the Point" Tepes was effective. It was just so unsanitary. Bell jars were so much more elegant. There was none of the flies and stench that gathered around the gallows in towns with less-sophisticated methods for crime prevention. At least the freezing temperatures were keeping both in check for now. Although already the area was flocked with Huginn and Muninn's kin at the free buffet. Well, she had promised the slavers that she wouldn't give them to the free folk women if they dismantled their ship. She just hadn't mentioned what was in store for them instead.  
  
_Rapist, slaving scum. Enjoy a taste of what you subjected your captives to._  
  
Deep, cleansing breaths. Face to the sea, Agatha breathed the fresh salt-laden air in a Skiffandrian meditation exercise. It was the first time she had ever been by the ocean. Her wandering life with Uncle Barry had never taken her to Europa's shores. The Shivering Sea was quite the sight. It was the greatest expanse of water that she had ever encountered. White flecks of foam danced atop the waves driven by the polar wind. Far off in the distance was an iceberg. The sea held the promise of foreign shores. Perhaps _she would construct an armada that would sail across the water to Tyrosh and **shatter their walls and free the slaves and force those arrogant slaving scum to grub for their livelihoods in the ruins of their city whose stones had been mortared by the miseries of the ones they held in bondage**_ \--  
  
Hands settled on her shoulders. Agatha settled back against Toregg's chest. His touch grounded out the mad fury that had possessed her for days. She laced her fingers with his. She had come to know them very well. She had watched them help carve out wooden parts for her inventions. She had guided them when he had asked her to teach him smith-work. There was been their touch on her waist while dancing at that Yule party she had held just because. There had been other touches when she had held up her furs that night.  
  
There had been his hand in hers that night outside the slavers' camp. Toregg has squeezed her hand reassuringly while waiting for Osha out with the salt-water clan's fleet to sneak aboard the cog. If she didn't at least managed to blow the rudder, the slavers might escape with the captives they had on board. This had been it. This would be the first fight she had where she would be killing other humans. There hadn't been time to dwell on it after the demolition charges had blasted both mast and rudder of the ship. There had been only surging forward with the skinpipes playing. The warclanks had smashed through the gates of the palisade with a battering ram. Then they had charged inside. Agatha had stood there for a single frozen moment seeing what the slavers were doing with young women and children.  
  
She didn't remember much after, although Tormund had said twenty men had fallen to Reason that night.  
  
"Hey, everyone can see us!" Agatha shouted.  
  
"I hope they can." Toreggs' hands caressed where they had drifted southward. "You didn't have enough of those muffs made. So's everyone's been hearing what we've been doing in the night."  
  
"Yes. Thank you for reminding me I'm a screamer." With great reluctance, Agatha prized his hands away. "Later I will have you bathed and brought to my tent."  
  
"Aye, you have to treat with them crows," Toregg said. "Some o' the salt-walter clan chiefs want their blood. That Cotter, he's done for many of them."  
  
"Tell them they swore the Dynetroth to keep to my code," Agatha said. "Or else they can speak to me to renegotiate."  
  
"I don't think they will be taking back their pledge," Toregg said, nodding at the impaled slavers.  
  
"Good. Now, I'm off to be the big bad Heterodyne." Agatha smirked. "Have the leather loincloth handy for after, though."  
  
Toregg's answer was a quick but very satisfying kiss. Yes. Definitely one of her more successful experiments. He wasn't Gil. He wasn't Brynden. So what? She had known Gil for perhaps a few hours. Brynden hadn't visited her in Montmartre for a long time. Not to mention he was a variably-embodied consciousness stuck in a tree. Toregg was here. He was her friend. He had stood by her in battle. That had to be love, right?  
  
Agatha placed a hand on her stomach. She had been drinking her Maiden's Cup every days since that Christmas party. Lucky that Countess Marie had sewn in an emergency dose into her dress before she had gone into Sturmhalten. Agatha had cultivated Trusty Maiden Weed by the hot springs ever since finding out the primitive contraceptive potion the free folk used. Tansy and wormwood? Yeesh, no! Toregg hadn't pressed the issue about, er, issue. She knew he'd make an excellent father. Maybe, when the ice broke in the spring--  
  
Right. It was magnara time. Agatha checked herself over. Her time with the Circus had taught her the importance of presentation. She had decided to go for Barbarian Queen, Sub-Arctic Edition. At least that version didn't have to wear the ridiculously-brief costumes that Pix had sported. The green woolen dress had been spun from cloth from the prototype automated loom. A wolf-pelt cloak pinned with her amber sigil brooch and several bits of free folk jewelery added the barbarian element. Agatha also donned the Qohorik mail byrnie that had once been the Tyroshi captain's. Kylla had insisted that Agatha pack along the formalwear even though she was going to war. Good thing, too. Agatha wished she had brought Kylla along on this jaunt, for the chance to head south with the Night's Watch flotilla. But she had had to leave Kylla behind to administrate the village and handle routine government business.  
  
The warclanks swept aside their crossed spears when she came to the skin tent meant for formal audiences. The ironwood breastplates of the clanks had been removed to show off their inner mechanisms. Honestly, the warclanks had been good for little more than bearing the ram. No decent gyros, the voltaic cells had low combat endurance, and she was still working out the kinks with weirwood-based circuitry. They looked impressive enough to show off what she could do. Within the tent was the anvil from the ship's forge. Agatha settled on it with Reason and her shield by her right side. Ultima Regio was within easy reach. Across her lap went the smith's hammer. Onto her head went her bronze crown, a little heavier now from the bronze the salt-water clans had contributed.  
  
Osha and Tormund stood guard behind her in the mail and steel helms taken as booty. Tormund smirked when a loud gasp was heard from outside. Agatha forced herself to stay imperiously cool. To his credit, Cotter Pyke didn't show what he must be feeling after seeing a clank for the first time. The captain and his men didn't seem to be the boogeymen of free folk legendry. They were by and large a hard-bitten bunch of men in salt-stained black clothing. They were pretty disciplined. Doubtless their command was responsible for that. The wiry, lean man with pock-marked cheeks could have stepped right out of casting as a bandit chief.  
  
"Herr Kapiten," Agatha said, playing up her Transylvanian accent. "Welcome. We appreciate the aid of your fleet. The extra fish you've caught have helped feed those we've rescued."  
  
"Keeps the men busy and away from your folk, your grace," Cotter said bluntly.  
  
"'Magnara' will do," Agatha said. "Later, we hope we can be 'Agatha'."  
  
"Or you can call her She Who Must Be Obeyed--"  
  
"Tormund? Shut up." Agatha smiled. "Will you take a seat? Have some honey-liqueur?"  
  
"I'll stand, if it please you, magnara," Cotter replied. "We'll be sailing back to Eastwatch in the hour."  
  
"Okay. I guess nice-nice is over." Agatha narrowed her eyes. "I'm sensing some hostility here that I don't think we deserve.'  
  
"What did you think a man of the Watch would feel?" Cotter asked. "Bad enough you have that forge you're sitting on. Steel will spread through the wildings like pox through a brothel. And those things outside!"  
  
"My clanks are meant to defend the lands I have under my protection," Agatha said. "Every scrap of steel from my forges will bear my sigil. Trust me, word will spread that anyone using it to raid south will wish they had it as easy as the slavers-on-a-stick out there."  
  
"You've my respect for that, magnara," Cotter Pyke said. "If it's peace you want, then you hand us the forge and smash those things."  
  
"We are a free nation, kapiten." Agatha tossed a roll of parchment to him "This is a treaty for your Lord-Commander. Ask him to consider it. There are also details of the Dynetroth everyone in my lands swears to."  
  
"Words are wind." Cotter nodded. "I'll bring them to Lord Qorgyle, for what it's worth. But the Watch knows that the pledge of a wilding's weaker than piss."  
  
"Hoy, crow, you can't talk to her like that!" Tormund roared. "Give me leave to meet him outside with spear in hand."  
  
"I'd split you crown to crotch like a peach," Cotter said. "Only way to know a wilding's worth trusting is to have a boot on his throat or a blade at his heart. Eight thousand years have taught us that."  
  
"ENOUGH!"  
  
Everyone froze as the words filled the tent.  
  
"I understand," Agatha said. "My own family was responsible for centuries of bad deeds. It took years of heroism by my uncle and father to make up for that. We have to prove ourselves."  
  
"Heed my advice, magnara," Cotter said. "Or else we'll have to come back."  
  
"Herr Kapiten?"  
  
"Aye, magnara?"  
  
" _Don't make me come over there._ "


	15. The Cut and Thrust of Diplomatic Discourse

Cotter damned himself for a craven.  
  
He should have killed her then and there. The wilding queen had been one long stride away. He wouldn't have had a chance to draw his blade. The beer-keg chieftain and the spearwife would have been on him. Best way would have been with his hands: stride forward as if to offer his hand, then seize that smith's hammer. Or he could have snapped her neck. Sure, he would have been breaking guest right and the sanctity of parley. He would have stained the honor of the Watch. Better a bastard damned for all time than letting her live, like the Dornish had done for the first Daeron.  
  
He hadn't done it. There might be still some shred of honor in his bastard heart. It had been her voice that had truly stayed his hand. It had sliced through him like the wind did atop the Wall on moonless nights. Those were the times you had fancies about the Others lurking out there rather than being long dead and done. Another part of him had been a damned fool. If only she had been ironborn and had a cock! She would have been a king of salt and stone who could have lead the ironborn to the Old Ways. The wildings had chattered of her when he'd tapped a keg of good ale for them last eve. The Heterodyne had been chosen by moot and had forged her own crown. What man of the islands wouldn't pay fealty to a liege whose throne was an anvil?  
  
Cotter shuddered when the wooden men clashed their spears together behind him. Bugger him up the arse with one of her stakes, the wilding queen was a damned witch with magics beyond anything he had heard of. Oh, the highborn fools of lords and maesters might prate about it all being mummery. Cotter knew better. The Others might be gone. But strange things lurked beyond-the-Wall: skinchangers, woods-witches, and even giants if old ranger tales were true. The millwork within them hurt the eye to look at. Proof that she had used fell spells to animate them. Their eyes were the worst. Soulless white light gleamed behind the glass.  
  
Then he saw what was going on by the shore.  
  
"What are you doing, Pate?" Cotter roared. "We took oaths. Get those wilding sluts off the ship!"  
  
"Captain, if it please you," his first mate said, frozen in the act of helping a redheaded wench over the side. "These aren't--"  
  
"I don't, not if we're smuggling babes too." Cotter heard the crying of a child in his longship. "Unless you've sprouted teats and pledged to play wet nurse, a savage's brats have no place either."  
  
"Captain!" Pate hissed.  
  
"WHAT?"  
  
"They're women the salt-water clans took on raids south," Pate hissed. "The wilding the queen's a-fucking brought them down under guard himself. He said there were more inland they'd be bringing to shore come spring."  
  
Cotter had the oddest feeling as he felt the gazes of the women peering over the gunwhales at him.  
  
This must be shame.  
  
"Didn't their queen tell you that?" Pate asked.  
  
"Pate, go to the magnara's tent," Cotter said. "Tell her that the Watch thanks her."  
  
"Shouldn't you--"  
  
"Do it or you'll become bait rather than first mate," Cotter hissed. "By the Drowned God, by a ship full of women and I'm the biggest gaping cunt around."  
  
Pate legged it up the the magnara's tent. Good sailor, but he must have fallen on his head a few times before going to sea. Cotter decided to transfer his banner to another ship. Sailing home on the _Ice Dragon_ when it was full of women he'd been an utter arse to would be chillier than a dip in the Shivering Sea. That was the problem: women. Cotter knew women only as salt-wives to take and whores to toss coppers to. He wasn't one for honeyed words. Best let that summer fool of a knight at the Shadow Tower play the diplomat. The only diplomacy that Cotter knew came at the edge of an axe-blade.  
  
Cotter was aboard the _Wavedancer_ when Pate brought the chest to him. Scratching his scraggly beard, Cotter fingered the obsidian arrowheads and daggers filling it. Odd. There was also a parchment within. Ah, he'd have that drunkard of a maester at Eastwatch read it out to him. He could read a coastline, but not letters on a page. Cotter stood by the mast for support when the longship backed oars into the sea. The magnara had gathered with her tribe in ordered ranks. In front of her was--a log? It had been bored out and set on a sledge.  
  
The magnara raised her Valyrian blade in salute.  
  
Cotter raised his own blade of humbler steel to return it.  
  
Dark Sister swept down.  
  
Fire and smoke blasted out of the log.  
  
"ROW FASTER!" Cotter screamed, as the bow of the ship rose three feet above the water.  
  
+++++  
  
"First time I ever saw a crow near fly!" Tormund chortled. "You don't need one o' them bags o' light-air to get an airship. All you need's a sharp bang to get the oars churning."  
  
"That wise, Agatha?" Osha asked, more thoughtfully. "Seems like you didn't have to scare them so. Those clanks should have been enough."  
  
"Why, that was just a respectful farewell salute." Agatha grimaced. "I, ah, admit my temper might have been a little roused."  
  
"Toregg had hope to the gods you're as roused tonight!" Tormund shook his head. "Forget that crow captain. A pucker in his arsehole'll get him thinking twice about bothering us."  
  
"The salt-water clansmen, too," Osha said. "There's a lot o' grumbling about you taking them women from them."  
  
"The rules were explained to them before they swore the Dynetroth." Agatha squatted by the cannon. "As magnara, I stand as champion to any women who want to free themselves of an unwanted capture and aren't strong enough to leave. Anyone who disputes that can see Reason."  
  
"That pet dragon o' yours'll help," Tormund said.  
  
"A little cowering among our new friends helps," Agatha admitted. "This is mostly a bluff. It will take months and warmer weather for the saltpeter beds to produce enough KNO3."  
  
Agatha inspected the cannon for cracks. She had proofed it with a triple-strength charge after boring it out. It was still just a hollowed-out ironwood log with a bore reinforced with a paper-thin layer of cast iron. That had required melting down several swords and iron cooking pots. She had reinforced the outside with an intricate arrangement of bronze straps. It was still, well, _wood._ She hadn't dared risk firing solid ball from it. The most she felt was safe was a light charge beneath a load of flint shards as grapeshot. Granted, it had done the job against that first ambush against a slaver party. Watching those scum vainly trying to push their intestines back inside had been so satisfying.  
  
Heeeee.  
  
Agatha glanced out to the horizon where the longships had disappeared a few moments ago. Dammit. Slavers she was fine exterminating like the vermin they were. She most certainly did not want a war with the Night's Watch. Scare them a touch, yes. The nerve of that captain, sending a lackey with a half-hearted apology instead of crawling to her on his belly as was proper! But they weren't her enemies. They should be standing together against what was to come. She had so many ideas of reinforcing the Wall's defences. Talk about a challenging project. All she had to do was overcome eight thousand years of free folk acting like opportunistic idiots. Which was, she thought, even more of a challenging project.  
  
Tapping her chin, Agatha regarded the mouth of the Dyne River. The renaming of the river had been a private joke of Tormund's--"well, it's the Heterodyne's now!"--that had somehow spread. Not that there had been any agreement among the anarchic free folk about its name. The Antler River was just a title on the Night Watch's maps. Most of the locals had just called it "the river". Where the Dyne met the Shivering Sea was bracketed by two peninsulae on either side that must have inspired the name given to it by the southrons. The slaver's camp had been erected on the southern headland: earthworks and a defensive ditch reinforced by stakes. It had been free-folk-proof. Not, however, Heterodyne-proof.  
  
Keeping the mouth of the Dyne under her control would be critical. The river was the best invasion route. Those light-draft longships could sail far up the river and be portaged around many stretches of rapids. Any forces coming in by land would need be suppled from ships on the coast for a sustained campaign. An atonal hum escaped her lips while she considered her options. Stone fortifications would be best. There were nineteen castles scattered along the Wall according to Tormund. Only three were occupied, with the rest going to ruin. There was plenty of dressed stone that could be repurposed.  
  
Yeah. Perhaps a raid would be in order if the Night's Watch decided to become a problem. Send a strong force to scale the Wall with hot-air balloons to divert men from Eastwatch to deal with the threat inland. Then hit their pocket fleet with a night attack with canoes armed with spar torpedos to take out the heavy galleys and longships. Agatha had examined the cog's design while its own crew had torn it apart. With a little work, she felt she could whip up a smaller copy with a much more efficient sail plan. It was a little distasteful to contemplate taking the Eastwatch garrison hostage to load up a cargo fleet with stolen stone. Needs must.  
  
"You have gone native, haven't you?"  
  
"AHHHH!" Spinning about, Agatha gaped at Brynden Rivers standing beside her. His greatcoat flapped in the wind. "Black fire and slag, I'm not even asleep!"  
  
"You linked yourself more closely to the weirwoods than you know," Brynden said. He leaned on his cane. "Blood-magic is among the greatest and darkest of spells. I've found I can reach your mind when it is on the edge of the madness place."  
  
"You, ah, aren't observing when--" Agatha swallowed. "I slip into the fugue when Toregg and I--"  
  
"I keep very well away from your mind then."  
  
"Oh." Agatha frowned. "When I touched you at the cafe, that was too much stimulation, wasn't it?"  
  
"I allowed old desires to overwhelm me," Brynden said. "And I did not wish to press a suit that could never be requited upon a maid who should have a purer love than I."  
  
"I really missed you, Brynden," Agatha said softly. "If I made you uncomfortable, then we could have found a way around it."  
  
"My watch has not ended," Brynden replied.  
  
"Sweet lightning. I'm about to start a war with the men you once led." Agatha smacked a fist into the palm of her open hand. "What is the matter with people? I don't want a war. I just want to take care of my people in peace."  
  
"Mine brother crow was not wrong," Brynden said. "If you die without issue, then the Dynetroth means little. The free folk will have learned to forge steel."  
  
"Which won't matter when the inevitable comes," Agatha said. "We have, what, a decade or two before whatever is in the Land of Always Winter marches? Half the reason I'm organizing the free folk is to have them reinforce the Watch when the Long Night falls."  
  
"You mean to conquer the Wall with your wilding army to save it," Bryden's lips quirked. "Gods be damned, I should be naming you Lord-Commandress, magnara."  
  
"The irony hasn't escaped me," Agatha said. "This puts you in a bad position, doesn't it? I don't want you to give me any information about your brothers' plans."  
  
"The Night's Watch are the sword in the darkness, the shield which guards the realms of men." Brynden's red eyes were pitiless. "The steel in the scabbard has rusted. The shield is cracked. They must needs be reforged, if the night to end all nights is to have a dawn."  
  
Agatha blinked.  
  
She stood alone on the strand.  
  
It wasn't the chill wind off the waters that had her shivering.


	16. VS Day

Kylla von Cogg heard a scared gasp when she donned the glove. It was thin wool bleached white as new-fallen snow. Flexing her fingers, she ran it along the ironwood medical slab that was supposed to be have been washed and sanded. Top, bottom, sides, in the nooks and crannies by the straps: every centimeter was inspected for a hint of dirt. Kylla narrowed her eyes at the tips of the glove. She extended it to the assembled minions. The girl who had been assigned to ready that part of the lab for the Mistress' return broke into relieved sobs when the glove-tips turned out to be immaculate.  
  
By the time she was done, the minion-apprentices were quivering wrecks. Kylla didn't take any pride in bullying them. Well, mayhaps somewhat she did. She couldn't say she liked much the stinking savages her Mistress had pitied enough to rule when they had begged for her merciless overladyship. It was like a stolen sip from a glass of southron wine to have power over the sons and daughters sent to school in Mistress' household. In truth, they were hostages given by the clans and villages of the Dynelands to prove their loyalty. Mistress really didn't like that idea. So instead the minions were meant to be apprenticed in the crafts Mistress knew that they would bring back those skills when their time was done. She was hard on them as learning minionhood had been when training under Mistress. One day they might earn the Heterodyne sigil and even be granted the status of a minionly house. Kylla had earned both from Mistress.  
  
The minion-apprentices had done well. The glove-inspection had passed without a smudge on the fingertips. Even the hearth was clean of ash and dirt. Kylla finished with an review of the minions in their livery. Boy and girl, they were turned out in the labcoats and leather aprons that Kylla herself wore. None of them had earned the right to bear the golden trilobite. Only those who swore to serve the House of Heterodyne, as Kylla did, could wear the sigil of the Mistress. Kylla selected the three whose sections had been best turned-out to serve the Mistress--one as cupbearer to heat and mull a cup of mead, the others to the bath. The rest were dismissed to their posts should Mistress need assistants in her work in one part of the lab or the other.  
  
Kylla did one more round to calm the nervousness she had hidden from the minions. Serving as Mistress' seneschal while she was off to war had been the longest time she had acted in her Mistress' stead. It had worked out well enough. Kylla couldn't scare the breeches off the unruly free folk of the Dynelands. She could however smile sweetly while telling some who thought they could push around the "kneeler girl" that they find themselves put in for random rectal exams. Being in charge of Mistress' files had a power of their own. Kylla could also ensure the probes for the exams would have been buried in snow right up until they were headed for someone's arsehole while they were strapped belly down on the slab.  
  
As Mistress often put it: "HEEEE!"  
  
A horn sounded. Oh gods, was she perfect? Would Mistress approve? Kylla frantically examined herself for the least mistake before dashing out. She only remembered to take her sheepskin coat from its hook right before she opened the door. Kylla sped along the graveled path leading from Heterodyne Hall to Mechanicsburg's front gate. Walls of packed snow higher than a snow-bear standing on its hind legs rose on either side. This deep in winter, only the roofs of the village huts showed above the drifts within the village palisade. At least the packed snow outside the walls finally kept out the worst of the cold.  
  
Kylla had heard tales of when the northern lords had returned in glory from the wars against the Ninepenny Kings. Mistress came home from her first war in as much glory. The Dyneguard marched through in two lines several paces apart. Mistress had had them fight near-naked in the snow against her warclanks to teach them to stand fast against even the Others; she herself had drilled with them in the disciplines of the mummer's caravan to guard against the horrors of her world. Her generals Osha and Tormund rode between the files upon sturdy garrons. Tormund's sprear flew the standard of the Dynelands: Mistress' crown above a dawning sun above a field snow-clad trees and a winding river. Mounted atop Osha's spear was the head of what had to be one of the slavers, his jaw open forever in a scream.  
  
Midimmoths trumpeted as they drew sleds piled high with the booty claimed from the slavers. The second generation of the mammoths were as large as ponies after breeding among themselves. Kylla was already inventorying the booty: steel and jewels, gold and parchment, mariner's tools and an entire forge. She almost missed as Mistress strode in with her two warclanks flanking her. She was glorious in her greatcoat with mail gleaming beneath it. At her hip rode Reason, spell-forged Valyrian steel granted to her by Bloodraven himself. Kylla doubted even a Stark's return to Winterfell would be as great.  
  
So why did she look so worried?  
  
++++  
  
"Storrold's Point." Agatha tapped the peninsula marked on the charts from the slaver cog. "If they set up a fort and anchorage there, they'll be able to block any trade with us. They can even send supplies overland from the eastern side or direct from Eastwatch."  
  
"Won one war and she's spoiling for another." Tormund laughed. "We'll have black plumes in our helms come summer."  
  
"I am not seeking a war with the Night's Watch," Agatha said. "Besides, that didn't count as a war. Wars have rampaging clanks and clockwork sea urchins and stuff. Dealing with the Tyroshi was pest control."  
  
"Sure they'll do that?" Osha asked. "You said before you weren't no warrior."  
  
"Tactically, no. It's why you're my generals." Agatha shrugged. "I don't claim to be a whiz at strategy. This is only some systems analysis."  
  
"Might be better for us if them crows panic." Tormund rubbed his beard. "They march against us now, they'll be fighting us in the deeps o' winter without knowin' some o' the tricks you didn't use."  
  
"Not even that," Agatha said, jerking a thumb towards the ceiling, "will save us if they call on the northern lords or the Iron Throne for help. They can drown us in men."  
  
"The head of the flock down on the Wall's no Bloodraven," Osha said. "Sends men out along the Wall regular, but rangers don't go as far out as before."  
  
"A cautious man means I can talk to him," Agatha said. "That's why I sent Huninn on board the Night Watch ship."  
  
"If the fight comes, it comes." Tormund knocked back the strong red wine taken from the late captain's possessions. "Me 'n Osha'll worry about the fighting for now. Enjoy the beating you gave to those slaving bastards while you can."  
  
The hide "door" to her personal chambers flapped closed behind her generals and friends. Really, her rooms were several hide tents donated by the various villages. There was a certain rustic primitveness about that which pleased her. Agatha settled back into the comfy, ornately carved chair looted from the captain's cabin. Much of the fine furnishings of the cog's officers had ended up here. None of the free folk on the expedition had been much interested in that. She had, of course, committed the beds and bedding to the purifying fire. Some of whose former occupants had been tied to the scenes of their many crimes against womanhood atop the pyre.  
  
Right. She might be backsliding to the _old_ ways. It was probably a very bad sign that she was drinking a very good golden wine from the skull of her enemy. Agatha couldn't help smiling fondly at the captain's skull whose jaw was wired open in the howl of agony he had experienced right before blade met neck. She couldn't have refused the gift, after all. Kylla and Toregg had been so proud when presenting it to her at dinner last night. Her chief minion had done an excellent job boiling off all the flesh and sawing off the top. Toregg had used all the smith-work he had learned from her to fit one of the captain's goblets in his brainpan. Agatha's eyes prickled with tears as she traced the gilded Old Tongue runes carved into the skull.  
  
"World's Best Magnara".  
  
 _There was nothing she would not do to keep them safe._  
  
Mind you, she hoped there wouldn't be a war for some time. There had had been a sneaking, primordial joy in righteously smiting the enemies of freedom. Not to mention slicing them, reducing them to quivering chunks with crude grapeshot, and that bit involving the dynamo and experiments on the conductivity of the human urethra. Still, she couldn't understand why the Old Masters had gone out raiding and reaving as much as they did. It all sounded so exhausting. All she wanted to do after the victory was settling into some research. There were so many projects she had put aside for the war: the weirwood communications experiments, analyzing the unusual readings from Reason, improving her clanks.  
  
And.  
  
Er.  
  
Agatha idly flipped open the graphic yet, ah, informative illustrated tome that she hadn't quite had the heart to immolate.  
  
Last night would be the last she would have drunk her Maiden's Cup.  
  
No, no. Toregg needed some recovery time. Agatha tucked the manual behind the bookshelf the minions had set up now that she had actual books. Most of them were maps and nautical charts. The rest were in some currently-indecipherable script in what had to be the "Valyrian" dialects from across the narrow sea. The pillow book was in the same language. But, er, the captions weren't exactly needed. Mmmm. She definitely needed to work off some excess energy that didn't involve testing-to-destruction of her beau. A hum escaped her lips as she glanced at the workbench beside her bed. Finally, she had enough parts to complete the projects from the materials salvaged from the cog and the slavers' raiding galleys.  
  
It had been so long since she had done this.  
  
Agatha's fingers blurred as it took form.  
  
Gently, she wound a stem when the work was done.  
  
*DING*  
  
A single eye snapped open.  
  
" _Hello, you!_ "


	17. On the Wall

This had to be a dream.  
  
Serra had dreamed of this ever since she had been three-and-ten. The life she had known at Last Hearth had become so hazy. She had fantasized about walls that were more than hide, food that wasn't eaten raw when it wasn't seared over a fire, and clothes that weren't badly-spun wool and skins. So this could not be real. She could not be sitting before a roaring fire in a stone hearth listening to the winter wind batter against stout walls. She could not be wearing fine silks beneath the blanket draped over her shoulders. Her belly could not be full to bursting of good food and decent ale.  
  
Giggling came from a room upstairs. Serra stifled a sob of relief. This couldn't be a dream. In all her fantasies, she had never pictured salvation being in a brothel. She and the others freed by the Heterodyne had been half-dead of greensickness from the storm that had overtaken thema day from Eastwatch. By some miracle they had made it to port. Serra hadn't even been awake the moment they finally passed south of the Wall. She had been carried out feverish by the black brothers to the closest shelter.  
  
The whores had taken her and the others in the moment they had come through the doors. The inn served Eastwatch also as tavern and pleasure-house for the ships who called at its docks. Serra guessed that it also served those brothers in black who were not so obedient to their vows. She grinned when she thought about poor Captain Pyke shooed away by the whores who thought it improper for the rescued women to be kept among so many men. The foundlings rescued from beyond the Wall now wore borrowed finery. Their hosts guarded them with pans and rolling pins while they slept.  
  
Serra dragged her chair closer to the fire. It had been so long since she had been warm. She was almost inside the grate. Holding her hands out, she dreamed of the hearth within her family's holdfast. The fire within the open hearth in its great hall was never allowed to go out. It was said the Wall might fall if it did. She pictured at as she had last seen it before riding out one fine summer day not long after her nameday. That had been the day when the nightmare had began. It was the nightmare that had finally ended when Wex had sunk to his knees, clutching the ropes of his own guts, after the magnara's blade had made her a widow.  
  
A babe cried upstairs. Serra bit her lip. It was better for Edmyn and Alys to have been given to the magnara than taken south. The Heterodyne had promised them a place in her household. Edmyn would train among her guardsmen to free others like her some day. Alys would like as not rise in the magnara's service. Her daughter had taken to learning her letters on the sly, though Wex had beat her for trying to teach her son "soft kneeler ways". What life would they have as Snows in the Umber lands, where wilding blood was despised?  
  
Serra couldn't have born it to bring them home.  
  
She couldn't stand forever being reminded of the night of their conception as Wex had thrust into her--  
  
Salt wind and damp snow swirled into the inn's common room. Serra spun about with the dagger in her hand. No. Not again! A hulking figure strode into the circle of firelight. Head and body were draped in a snowbear's pelt. In one eye socket glinted a false one of dragonglass. The dagger tinkled on the flagstones. This was no wilding that had snuck into Eastwatch. This was a face she had dreamed and longed for so long.  
  
"Father," Serra Umber cried, as she rushed into his arms.  
  
+++++  
  
The ironborn had never reaved much in Dorne. One reason for that was the closest Dornish shore to the Iron Islands was the bleak southern coast. There were damned few villages to raid and even fewer safe anchorages. There wasn't enough wealth to for plunder. The unspoken reason was that the Dornish were a nasty bunch of treacherous snakes who could never be trusted to submit. Taking one for a thrall or salt wife might earn you a knife across your throat when abed or ground glass in your dinner. Cotter had enjoyed the times he'd had a Dornish girl when docked at the Planky Town. He had also paid the gold price rather than the iron when he did.   
  
Cotter Pyke thought about that as he stood at attention in the Lord-Commander's solar. Meryn Qorgyle hunched over the books and maps spread out before him in his solar. He was a tall man of six feet and an inch with the tanned skin of a sandy Dornishman. He seemed smaller from hunching over under layers of warm blacks against the winter cold. Word was that he wore scarcely less in summer. The silver shot through his black hair betrayed his six-and-sixty years. At his throat were was a pin with his house`s arms: three black scorpions on a red copper field. Back in the first Daeron's day, his house had killed the Tyrell who had ruled Dorne for the dragons with scorpions hidden in the canopy above his bed.  
  
This Qorgyle was as cold-blooded as the creatures on his house arms. He acted more the steward than the ranger he had been. He held the Night's Watch closer to the Wall than most commanders had. At least he wasn't another Sleepy Jack. Patrols were sent out regular from Castle Black: every second day towards Eastwatch, ever third to the Shadow Tower. He took special care to husband the Watch's supplies. The fleet at Eastwatch had never lacked for what they needed. Still, by the Drowned God, the Lord-Commander was a bit of an old woman. Cotter had been here a week. Every day, Qorgyle had not made his decision. Cotter found he couldn't brook more delay.  
  
"The fleet needs me, m'lord," Cotter said. "I'm not use to the Watch this far from the sea."  
  
"You seek to rush me to a decision, captain." Qorgyle steepled his fingers. "This matter requires rather more delicacy than is your wont."  
  
"You know my mind on the Heterodyne," Cotter said. "There's anchorages aplenty on the west of Storrold's Point. None as good as Hardhome was, but enough for a few longships."  
  
"Yes yes. We run down any boats of the coastal tribes sworn to her." Qorgyle dragged a brazier closer. He rubbed hands clad in fingerless gloves over the coals. "Blockade any traders from her shores. And what then happens to the women in her realm she promised to return to us?"  
  
"A few stolen smallfolk women aren't worth having her get steel," Cotter said. "Those wooden warrior and that thunderers were what she could make from buggering wood. We're fucked hard once she has iron for that forge she stole."  
  
"I am not blind to the dangers, captain," Qorgyle said. "That is why I am not planning an invasion. We have few enough men to man the Wall. Sending the hundreds needed to root her out when we have no idea what awaits us is folly."  
  
"Every day we let her alone she'll grow stronger," Cotter protested.  
  
"So, pray, shall I call upon the Starks to lend me their bannermen?" Qorgyle narrowed his eyes. "I can see myself asking Lord Rickard for a thousand swords to attack unprovoked a woman who has released from captivity more women than the Watch has saved in ten years. Including the cousin of the lord of Last Hearth, no less."  
  
The Lord-Commander tapped the parchments on the table.  
  
"These are the missives from a civilized woman," Qorgyle said. "One who has been trained not just in a lady's courtesies, but in diplomatic discourse. The Lady Heterodyne understands laws and treaties above that of a brandished axe."  
  
"Civilized." Cotter couldn't help a laugh. "I saw her sacrifice that poor bastard of a slaver to a weirwood tree."  
  
"Nonetheless, this is a matter for quills and ravens." Qorgyle nodded. "Yet we should not neglect steel as well. You have my permission to create the fortified anchorage on Storrold's Point. We should pay more attention to slavers, after all."  
  
At least the man wasn't an utter craven.  
  
"Captain, I ask you not to act the envoy." Qorgyle's voice sharpened like a scorpion's sting. "A proper one will be found. In the future, mind, we will consider the Heterodyne the sovereign of her lands. Do remember that you will be representing our order if you meet her again."  
  
"Never fear that, m'lord," Cotter replied. "You'll never see me forgetting what she is."  
  
"Mmmm. As soon as is practical, you will send a ship bearing certain gifts north." Qorgyle idly picked up a book. "I shall send this among the others. _The Ten Thousand Ships_. Yes. Very appropriate."  
  
Cotter had been around lords long enough to know when to slip out to sea. He couldn't say he was happy. At least the Lord-Commander hadn't ordered him to bow and scrape to the magnara. He paused at the threshold of the solar. Qorgyle was hunched over the papers as if they were anchors weighing him down. Cotter shuddered. Would that the Drowned God take him to his watery halls if ever the chance of the lordship. Lording meant dancing with daggers in the shadows. It meant papers and scheming. He pitied the brother who'd be sent to the Heterodyne's court. Might be that mincing knight of a Mallister come to think of it, with his empty boasts of tourney victories and uptilted nose. Now that was a thought to warm Cotter on cold nights.  
  
In the Lord-Commander Tower's undercroft were several doors leading to the wormways. Cotter hated the underground maze beneath Castle Black. They were too much like the mines of the Iron Islands. Only the lowest of thralls or most despised of ironborn worked in the dark, flood-prone mines. Every sailor feared being trapped down deep in solid rock. He didn't have a choice. The snow was piled forty feet high this deep into winter around the grounds of Castle Black. There wasn't the gales which swept away the drifts at Eastwatch. Several oil lamps hung from hooks in the walls. Striking flint to steel, Cotter lit one before venturing into a wormway. He made sure to stay to the well-trodden passage rather than any of the side-branches. Do that, and you'd lose your way all too quick. He had learned that lesson when he had served here before being sent to Eastwatch. He would never hear the tale of Gendel and his folk lost in the caverns beneath the Wall the same way.  
  
He had the wormways to himself this late. Most of Castle Black's brothers were abed, save for those atop the Wall. That didn't comfort him overmuch. The tunnels seemed more haunted than usual. Cotter found his free hand going to one of the daggers at his belt. Not the steel, but one of the dragonglass blades in that chest the Heterodyne had sent along with her missives. Odd, that. The parchment within it had said it was a gift from her own arsenal to the Watch. Harmune hadn't bothered to hide the contempt in his voice when he had read out her letter about discovering that dragonglass and dragonsteel being bane to the Others. Cotter had joined along with the maester...in public. But he'd taken to bearing one of her gifts beside his steel dagger. Seeing what he'd seen of her magics had had him looking up at the Wall. A man got to thinking about _why_ Brandon the Builder had built such a wall, and why the Watch in years past had piled it higher and higher. Everyone knew that it had been because of the Others. The Others hadn't been seen for thousands of years. They were long-gone.  
  
Only, the magnara bore what had to be Dark Sister. That had been Bloodraven's sword. The same Bloodraven who everyone had whispered was a sorcerer who had learned foul spells from his half-sister Shiera. Bloodraven had taken to ranging deeper and deeper into the haunted forest even when he should have been an old done man. He had disappeared thirty years ago. The Heterodyne likely had simply found the sword along with his corpse. But--well, sending the Watch something meant to fight the Others like she was some brainless greenlander smallfolk girl didn't fit what he had seen. She was as much a sorceress as Bloodraven had been said to be. Might she be his daughter who had learned his arts and certain secrets that Bloodraven had found to his doom? Bugger him sideways, the wormways were making him as much an old woman as Qorgyle. He needed to get above the ground to light and the company of other men.  
  
Talons fixed onto one shoulder.  
  
An inhuman voice screeched "FOR SCIENCE!" into the ear above it.  
  
"There you are." Lantern light came around the corner. "My thanks, captain. I thought I had lost our messenger to the Dynelands.'  
  
Cotter found himself lacking a tongue. Not to mention standing in a puddle of his own piss.  
  
_Fucking ravens._  
  
"Here you go, ah, Huginn." A liver-spotted hand wearing something like a falconer's glove lifted up. "Back to the rookery with you. Have you of need of my services, Captain?"  
  
"Message. Going back to Eastwatch." Not a wight who had crawled out from its tomb. The stooped figure in black robes had a maester's chain around his neck.   
  
"And no doubt a calming potion for the evening." The maester's violet eyes were clouded. They still had a sharp cast to them. "If you could wait a few moments for me to finish, I will provide both."  
  
"Scurrying about fetching more tomes for his lordship?" Cotter managed.  
  
"The lord-commander has had me busy searching the archives." The maester's balding pate was framed by a tonsure of silver-blonde hair. "No, I am taking some time selecting some glass to send to the Heterodyne. She sent a letter requesting some alchemist's equipment to better brew medicines for her people.'  
  
"She'll brew whatever hellish concoction was in that thunderer," Cotter snapped.   
  
"Fascinating substance. I suspect it is some form of saltpetre mixture, oft used among mummers to create smoke." The maester bobbed his head. "Very clever of her to create something like a scorpion without needing a bow."  
  
"So it isn't magic?" Cotter asked.  
  
"Science, she claims. She has offered to share what she has learned as a student with the Citadel should they send a maester to her court."  
  
Cotter froze.  
  
Fuck him up the arse with a stake.   
  
Saving the Umber girl, sending the treaty, offering the maesters some of her secrets--aye, Qorgyle had it right. She'd been well-trained by what had to be her father.  
  
_She was seeking out allies to blunt any move the Watch might make against her._  
  
Cotter prayed fervently that the Lord-Commander was her equal in cunning. Because right now, she had them foxed.  
  
"Captain?"  
  
"Aye?" Cotter shook himself free of his maunderings.  
  
"I wish to speak to you of the blade you saw. It concerns me..."


	18. Winterfell and Trade Talks

_The stag charged thiough the wood with the arrow buried deep in its shoulder. She could smell the blood and the rage-fear in the trail of scent to it left behind. Fear of being such prey welled up within her. The fear was banished by the lust for speed as her hooves churned up the snow. Faster, faster, she had to be first. The baying of the hounds echoed through the forest. For a moment, she dipped into the packmind of chase and hunger and must prove to pack leader. Then she burst through a gap into the trees right upon the stag as it reared up._  
  
Lyanna narrowly dodged a hoof that would have crushed her skill. Winterwind spun about without a touch to the reins. It was if they were one mind. Brandon upon his destrier in a mounted melee could not have had a surer seat. The stag was as fierce a fighter as any knight. Hooves flashes perilously close. Yet nary a single one touched her. She could tell when the stag's fury weakened for a moment when the arrow shifted with it. Now. There! Lyanna drove her hunting spear deep into its heart.  
  
The stag silently sank to its side. Lyanna cautiously circled about it lest it try one last strike with its hooves. What a magnificent animal. It must have seen at least one turn of the seasons, from winter to winter, before being brought down. Lyanna laid a hand on its muzzle. The womanly part of her which cried to minstrel's sad songs ached as her grey eye met soft brown ones. But she was a northwoman and a Stark besides. Drawing her dagger, she granted the stag the mercy with a swift cut across the throat.  
  
She knelt beside her quarry as she sang a prayer in Old Tongue. She scarce knew the meaning of the words. The North had abandoned the Old Tongue for the Andal thousands of years before, though northmen still prayed to the old gods rather than the Seven. You still sang the song to release the prey's spirit back into hands of the gods of wood and stone. They would guide it back to be born anew as a fawn to grow strong for the next hunt.   
  
The pack gathered about her as she sang the stag home. Their wild-blooded leader clapped a hand on her shoulder. Brandon was bigger than life in his Stark greys beneath a bearskin cloak. White teeth flashed in the midst of a full beard. The silent one in their pack murmured congratulations. Ned's beard was a poor thing when compared to his elder brother's. The little pup Benjen rode up last on his pony.  
  
"Ly, you brought it down, you brought it down!" Benjen babbled. "Weren't you scared?"  
  
"Barely gave me a proper fight," Lyanna said.  
  
"It gave you more than you knew." Ned pressed a cloth to her cheek. It came away red. "You were cut by a hoof."  
  
"Little sister is practicing for another stag," Brandon said, tousling her hair. "She'll have to keep that spear sharp for her betrothed."  
  
"I am sick to death of such japes!" Lyanna cried. "I hear enough about Robert gods be damned Baratheon from Ned."  
  
"I thought you would want to hear of him," Ned said. "So that you are not strangers when you meet for your wedding."  
  
"By the way you praise him," Lyanna snapped back, "you should be the one being the one having his cloak placed over your shoulders."  
  
"Robert will marry Ned!" Benjen laughed, rolling about in the snow. "Robert will marry Ned."  
  
"Come, Lyanna," Brandon said. "Robert is every maiden's fantasy, they say. You'll have a bedding you won't forget."  
  
"When he is finished with every serving wench first," Lyanna said. "Did not his last letter to you tell about siring a bastard, Ned? If I wanted a drunken lout who spreads his seed about every maid in twenty leagues, I would have married Brandon and called myself princess."  
  
"Don't say that, Ly," Benjen said, looking about as if for snarks. "The king will hear you. He will rip out your tongue."  
  
"The king's at Castle Cerwyn," Lyanna said. "That's far away to hear me when there's naught but us about."  
  
"The pup is right," Ned cautioned. "You can't say that while the king holds court in the North. Not even as a whisper."  
  
"Ned speaks true," Brandon said. "You heard the tale of the stableboy not a sennight ago."  
  
"I know, Bran." Lyanna touched the stag. "Have the huntsmen butcher it and give the meat to those as need it in the winter town."  
  
"What of the hide?"   
  
"That too." Lyanna turned away. "I will be covered by a stag soon enough."  
  
Winterwind was by her side in an instant. She did not even have to whistle for her mare. Lyanna ignored Ned's protests as she galloped towards the edge of the wolfwood. She loved her brother beyond words. But how could he think her content to wed a man who had known her only through the letters she had written to her brother during his fostering? Lyanna was no fool. She was the Lord of Winterfell's daughter. Her hand might be given to any for the good of her house. Yet, she had thought she might meet a suitor at a feast or a dance. Instead, her father had granted her hand to a stranger far from the North.  
  
Hoofbeats muffled by the snow beneath the trees came from behind. Winterwind surged forward before Lyanna reined her in. She did not want to force Brandon to race. Her eldest brother rode up beside her with a rueful smile on his face. It was the same she has seen when he had been pelted with snowballs and insults, breeches around his ankles, by two maids he had been seeing at the same time. They settled into a canter. Bran patted her back. He had always understood her best. They shared the same wolf's blood--the need to ride and hunt and live. It was Brandon who had taught her lance and sword even when their father denied her a blade to wear at her hip.  
  
The wind howled across the fields beyond the wolfwood. Both of them pulled up fur-lined cowls and tightened scarves across ther faces. Even Starks with ice in their veins could freeze in a hard winter. Even as the lazy wind beat at her, Lyanna could not help a whoop as they trotted towards the kingsroad. This was all the home she wanted. Let the Baratheons keep their storm-wracked coasts and misty forests. Cold hell to southrons it might be, Lyanna loved the wild beauty the land that was in her blood and bones. Lyanna looked south through skirling flakes at the grey walls of her house's seat rising high.  
  
The true kingsroad was buried beneath drifts thirty feet deep. In winter, the great road that ran from Castle Black to Storm's end was a path of packed snow between banks the height of a man mounted on a tall horse. It could be even less in the worst time. When the blizzards came, all that might mark the road were poles blazed with the Stark direwolf. Lyanna and Brandon rode up the side of a bank to gain shelter from the worst of the wind. A party of men came into view when they crested the top.  
  
Lyanna's hand moved to the dagger sheathed at her hip upon seeing so many of the party dressed in black. They could not be deserters. No men breaking their vows would be so bold to ride the kingsroad within sight of Winterfell. It was still rare to see any of the Watch so far south of the Wall in winter. Lyanna was also mindful of the men who took such oaths. The Watch was honored in the North. But the men who served in it oft had dangerous pasts. She knew all too well the song of the girl who had tried to join the Watch and paid a price for it.  
  
A roar came from a man not dressed in blacks. A huge man in furs and woolens charged up the other side of the bank upon a destrier. No other mount could have borne his weight. Upon the breast of his surcoat was a giant breaking chains. Lord Greatjon Umber bellowed a greeting that like as not started avalanches in the mountains beyond the wolfwood. Brandon and the lord of Last Hearth smacked each other's shoulders in greeting. Flasks of strongwine were already open when a swarthy man in fine blacks rode up to join them.  
  
"Greatjon, you big oaf!" Brandon said. "You are cutting it close to attending court."  
  
"Bah, I wouldn't haul my arse out of a warm hall for that," Greatjon boomed. "I am here because of the doings beyond the Wall."  
  
"My lord Umber--" the Dornish man said.  
  
"They'll be hearing the news soon enough," the Greatjon said. "Serra! She's back and sound with us again."  
  
"Your coz, taken by wildings?" Lyanna said, knowing of the story. "Did the Watch rescue her?"  
  
"No. It was a damned Queen-Beyond-the-Wall," Greatjon said.  
  
"Do you not mean King?" Brandon said. "And Kings-Beyond-the-Wall take women, not return them."  
  
"My lord Umber speaks true," Lord-Commander Qorgyle said. "Though the woman who calls herself Magna Heterodyne is not queen of all the lands beyond the Wall. But we must speak to your lord father and the king."  
  
Lyanna's heart quickened in excitement.  
  
"For a kingdom has arisen beneath the noses of the Watch, and its ruler is like nothing the world has seen."  
  
++++  
  
Agatha caressed the alembic as if it were her first--born child. Finally, she had proper apparatus to work with! No more grinding up quartz as feedstock. No more fumbling about with a crude glassbowing set-up. A fingernail lightly flicked a retort. Mind you, the finest laboratory glass in this world would be considered cheap work fit only for a starving student. It was so fragile compared to the borosilicate glassware designed for the bumps, explosions, and experiment rebellions in Euorpan labs.  
  
It still promised a bright and shining world where she did not have to sweat out every tool herself. Agatha had fantasies of idly flipping through a catalog as she had done back home when dreaming of outfitting her own workshop. All she had to do was list what she wanted, send off a money order, and get it delivered weeks later by airship. She had never done that because doing so would have been hideously expensive.   
  
Nor was it going to be so easy here. Leaving aside Night Watch interference, every single item from the outside world had to be imported over the treacherous Shivering Sea, Then it had to be sent by canoe or midimoth-sledge into the interior. All that had to be paid in trade goods rather than coin. The brass Dyneland cog was not recognized anywhere outside her lands; it was barely used within them by a people who trade by barter and wampum. Those few who did trade with the free folk skinned them mercilessly. They exchanged bottom-of-the-barrel goods for furs and amber worth tens of time the prices in southern markets.  
  
One of said traders sat at a table behind her. Agatha schooled her features into bored acceptance when she turned about to face him. Lilith had tried her best to teach her the ways of the market. Haggling lessons with the professional grifters and sharpsters had honed those skills to a sharp edge. Those who failed ended up peeling beets. Again. She would need every scrap she had to face the first foreign guest welcomed to her court. The whale sitting across from her had volunteered his ship to bring the Night Watch's gifts to her.   
  
"Very good," Agatha said. "To compensate you for your service, feel free to take the pick of furs from our stores."  
  
"I rewarded by the truth that the wonders I had heard of exist.." Illyrio Mopatis smiled through a vast blond forked beard. "I have been repaid a thousand times by what I have witnessed."  
  
"In that case, take on the furs as an advance," Agatha said. She pushed a parchment across the table. "I have a few other things on my shopping list."  
  
"Accept these for the furs, magnara." Golden coins bearing the sigil of a three-headed dragon cascaded onto the tabletop. "Pay what you wish upon my return."  
  
"Everything on the list?" Agatha raised a brow. "Even the steel items? You're risking you life if the Night Watch catches you."  
  
"The sailors in black would not dare interfere with an envoy from Pentos," Illyrio said. "Such an envoy would have engaged some sellsails as protection."  
  
"You must have rank in the city," Agatha said.  
  
"I am but the least of magisters." Illyrio shrugged. "The gates of the princely palace are closed to me. I have some small influence among my fellows on council. If I could show them one of your wonders--"  
  
Illyrio almost negligently gestured at the ironwood warclank standing guard at the flap to her solar.  
  
"I am afraid I could not insult the magisters of Pentos with crude work." Agatha slid another parchment across the table. "This is a design for an automated loom I have created. This dress is an example of its capabilities."  
  
"Such a generous gift, magnara." Stained teeth appeared in a brief smile.   
  
"Oh, may I ask another question?" Agatha set her skull-goblet before her. "What is your city-state's position on slavery?"  
  
"There are no slaves in Pentos, by law and treaty with Braavos." Illyrio shrugged. "We do buy unfortunates from the Dothraki and other Free Cities. But they are immediately manumitted, serving gratefully while redeeming the price spent to free them from bondage."  
  
Bowing, the magister of Pentos retreated from her solar. Agatha ate a wedge of the cheese that Illyrio Mopatis had brought with him from his galley anchored at the mouth of the Dyne. It was delicious when paired with the strong, sour red that came from the desert province of the Seven Kingdoms. The man had claimed to merely be a humble cheesemonger whose vessel had been blown off course when taking his custom to Gulltown.  
  
So now he was a magister of one of the Free Cities across the narrow sea. She hefted one of the gold coins he had so casually handed out. Illyrio had seen her facilities. He would not risk insulting her by trying to trick her with gilded lead, would he? A few minutes later, the results of tests on several of the coins had proven them quite pure. What she had on the table was a fortune compared to even the most optimistic prices she could expect from the furs.   
  
Agatha frowned. She was being taken. She just knew it. But she had no choice. She would have vastly preferred to have made contact with somone frome Braavos. Even the free folk knew that Braavosi traders were safe; the city was famous for its anti-slavery policies. Beggars could not be choosers. They needed steel and other vital supplies. The planned sawmills alone required better blades than bronze. If this was not a con, then this cheesemonger might have the power and muscle to break through a Watch blockade. Though she had not liked the way he had stared at the pretty women among the free folk.   
  
It was as if he was pricing them.  
  
Agatha set quill to parchment, naming one Illyrio Mopatis as Pentoshi envoy to her lands, hoping that this was not a mistake.


	19. Soaring

There was more of Lucrezia in her mind than Agatha was comfortable with.  
  
She could not help an instinctive shudder at watching Kylla preparing the Skinchanger. Ghostly, alien memories of crafting a throne of glass and brass rose up in her mind like a burn mark on a lab bench that would never come out. Agatha forced them back by sheer will. The device might have used certain principles of consciousness transfer that the woman she refused to call "mother" had mastered. It was not the Beacon Engine. There was no chance that Lucrezia might be accidentally summoned from the timespace she had sent her psyche.  
  
"No chance" of course translated to heavy restraint straps. Kylla was also drilled in certain recognition phrases to reduce the risk that anyone--or anything--had taken up unwanted residence. Agatha settled into the reclining chair with one last twitch of distaste. Beneath the cushions, the chair was laced with weirwood circuits that lead into the copper cognitive engine plates stacked underneath it. More ran into a circlet of weirwood studded with copper disks. Cool saline paste swabbed her brow as Kylla settled the interface band in place.  
  
Kylla called out the readings from the bank of gauges and dials along the side of the couch. Everything was nominal. Agatha took a deep breath. The device had been tested many times before. The days where test subjects ending up trying to roost in the rafters was an amusing memory. Tormund had been a very good sport. Kylla yanked the knife switch mounted on the back of the Skinchanger. Agatha twitched hard against the restraint straps at wrist and ankle and waist before the effect settled in.  
  
The telepathic savants known as wargs could achieve full communion with the animals they used as hosts for their minds. Agatha had no chance of achieving that deep a connection. Even her link to the weirwoods was merely an intensive version of the dreamstate that came from sleeping against one or entering a trance. She was no greenseer. She was, however, a Spark. That meant she was a dirty cheater who warped the psychic potential of weirwood and clank programming to replicate a warg's powers with SCIENCE!  
  
It took a moment before the feedback from Huginn's visual center was translated into a form she could understand. Agatha mentally opened a second set of eyes. All around her were white branches and red leaves. That was expected. There was no such thing as range in warging. A true warg could share dreams with a host animal across hundreds of kilometers. The Skinchanger achieved its best results when Huginn or Muninn were close to heart trees.  
  
Huginn had been sent ostensibly to lead ravens from Castke Black to learn the route to Ruddy Hall. There had been another reason had been inspired by some of Brynden's espionage exploits. Subvocalizing, Agatha sent a command into the raven's auditory complex. This particlar breed of raven was more intelligent than the common breeds she had known; teaching it commands to enact her will as if she were a true warg had not been hard.  
  
The Skinchanger could only send sight and sound. There was a sense of disembodiment as Agatha stayed in the back seat while the raven explored. A brief sense of vertigo gripped her when Huginn took wing. It flew through a dense wood of ancient trees: oaks and ironwoods and sentinel pines that had not been disturbed in centuries, There was little space for undergrowth between their gnarled roots. All around were high stones walls. It was a godswood. The "southern" lords past the Wall maintained the old sanctuaries within their castles. Brimstone-scented steam rose from a pool by one wall.  
  
Sitting among the roots of a great weirwood was a man in fine clothing of dark grey and white. Slung over his shoulders was a wolf-skin cloak to ward off the chill; even beneath the godswood's canopy, the snow lay thick after several days of a winter blizzard. The long lines of the melancholy face carved into the white bark of the heart tree were echoed in his features. His dark hair was salted with a touch of grey in beard and at his temples. His eyes also grey. They peered into the pattern-welded ripples of the Valyrian steel greatsword he polished.  
  
Wild cries and sounds of battle disturbed the peace of the godswood. A laughing boy with bright blue eyes and hair as dark as the man tumbled out from the cover of an oak's trunk. In one hand was a stripped branch that wielded in energetic yet amateurish cuts. The girl who pursued him was much better with her own improvised waster. For a moment, Agatha thought t that somehow Zeetha had made it to this world. The slim, athletic girl had brown hair instead of green and the grey eyes of the man by the heart tree. There was still so much of the warrior princess in her that Huginn croaked _kolee_ in sympathy.  
  
The girl's head snapped up.  
  
Then she shrieked when the boy rushed her hard enough the his blow sent her tumbling into the ice-covered pool before the weirwood.  
  
"And why are my cubs playing at swords," the man said, "when they should be at their lessons?"  
  
"Father!" the two chorused, one through chattering teeth.  
  
"Septa Undine waits upon you, Lyanna," the man continued. "And your time in the yard is over, Benjen. You have battles with parchment and ink with Maester Walys."  
  
"It was my fault," Benjen said. "I asked that we play. She is the Magnara of the Dyne, and I am proving myself to join her guard!"  
  
"You will not be joining a peasant levy with cuts like those," Lyanna grumbled, wringing out wet hair.  
  
"I beat you! The first time ever, too." Benjen beamed.  
  
"Only because I was distracted," Lyanna replied.  
  
"Inattention is deadly in battle," their father said. "And you are distracting yourself from other lessons as important as those of steel. Off with you, Ben."  
  
"Yes, Father," they said.  
  
"Lyanna, a word." The man wrapped his cloak around her. "I did you no favors when I allowed Brandon to teach you blade and lance. I know you tilt in secret at a shield hung on a branch in the wolfwood."  
  
"Northern ladies have taken up mens' arms," Lyanna protested.  
  
"You are not a Mormont," her father said. " You are a Stark and a maid besides with a duty to her house. We need friends south."  
  
"I know my duty." Lyanna stood defiant in spite of her soaked clothing and her father's chiding. "Is the magnara such a danger that we must have stormlander blades to face her? She offers peace and friendship's hand."  
  
"The magnara says is friend today," the man who must be Lord Rickard Stark said. "What she will be on the morrow, the gods only know. There are other reasons to seek ties south."  
  
"And you would not want your daughter to disgrace you before southron lords at court," Lyanna said.  
  
"You are never a disgrace." Rickard Stark stood up, embracing his sodden daughter. "You are a trial. Never a disgrace. Now, off with to a hot bath and dry clothes."  
  
Agatha ordered Huginn back into the branches. Spying on the Lord of the North's councils was one thing. Spying on a private family moment was another. The raven ascended the weirwood's crown until the sky came into view. For once, it was a clear sky a sun shining down from the east. Huginn leaped into the air with wings fluttering. It was amazing even without full access to its sensorium to soar up as if by will. This what Gil must have dreamed of when building his falling machines.  
  
Down below was a great plain covered in white dotted with the humps of farmer's cottages. Some still had smoke rising from their chimneys. More smoke came from the homes of a town about the size of Beetleburg. It had been close to two years since she had last seen anything like civilization. Why, there must be thousands of people below. Agatha reveled in the sight of a settlment greater than the villages and hamlets in the Dynelands.  
  
Towering over it all was a fortress greater than she had ever seen. Not even Sturmhalten Castle could compare to the grey-stone castle that was at least as large as the entire Transylvania Polygnostic campus. Two curtain walls with a moat between could withstand any sort of siege. She estimated the outer walls were twenty-four meters high, the inner six meters taller than that. Towers, keeps, and halls of the same stonework nestled within the walls about a complex arrangement of courtyards. Huginn cawed as it sensed her shock at the flash of glass in one ward. Was that a greenhouse?  
  
She was beholding Winterfell, the greatest castle in the North.  
  
_She had to get a better look._  
  
+++++  
  
The worst thing about Septa Undine was that she was impossible to hate. The woman from the Sept of the Snows who Father had engaged to teach her to be a southron lady should have been a dried-up crone who despised northern pagans. Instead, her teacher in the ways of the Faith and ladyship was a matron with laugh lines around her blue eyes and some red in her greying hair. Rumour had it that she was a Tully bastard's bastard before marrying the Seven-in-One. She was endlessly patient when Lyanna stumbled in with hair tangled from a ride or yawned through her lectures from the Seven-Pointed Star.  
  
It was horribly unfair.  
  
Today it was embroidery after memorizing the Duties of the Mother. Lyanna would have much preferred reading from the Warrior's Book or the Smith's. The ones open to her for lessons were Mother, Maiden, and Crone. At least embroidery meant steel in hand. It was not even that boring. She had learned to sew--after a fashion--to mend tack and torn clothing. The delicate stitching was a challenge, and Lyanna had never shied away from one. There was a peace in sitting by the hearth crafting a chain of blue roses upon a silk scarf.  
  
It was meant as a favor for the day that she might present it to her intended to wear in a tourney. She would have to smile as she tied a token of love to the arm of a man who had broken his vows in spirit to her many times over. Why did it have to be Robert Baratheon? He had never even seen her in the flesh. All he had was words on parchment from letters Ned sent to Storm's End after returning from his foster. Somehow that was enough to earn his undying love. Lyanna could not understand that. Surely to love, one had to dance and ride and laugh together for true love.  
  
Lyanna stared out the leaded glass of a narrow window. Her hands plied needle and thread as she watched a raven circling the Broken Tower. Would that she could fly north. Gods, she ached for a single adventure before chains weighed her down. What a thing to see, a magnara striding out of the Age of Heroes. The castle was abuzz about the news, from the lords who gathered in council in father's solar to the stableboys boasting of beating her horde if she invaded. The wild stories of wooden men who walked and Bloodraven himself training her with one of the Two Sisters were even more fantastic than Old Nan's tales.  
  
If she could just--  
  
\-- _fly and soar above the trees, above the wall, towards the lands where legends walked_ \--  
  
Lyanna blinked.  
  
She sat in a chair in a cabin akin to those she had read about in sea-stories. Two round windows before her showed a vista of sky and land far far below. A wild humming echoed off the walls from the woman sitting in her own seat. The cabin tilted when she spun a spoked wheel this way and that. Every so often she would move a lever among the many set among circles of glass in the wood below the windows. Tiny slivers of metal like compass needles shivered behind them.  
  
The humming stopped.  
  
The woman turned about.  
  
Green eyes behind Myrish lenses in wire frames, hair the color of wine and fire, then _pressure like a wave rising from the sea to sweep everything before it_ \--  
  
Lyanna Stark came to in confusion with Septa Undine holding her head in her lap as she called for the maester.


End file.
